


An Education

by Just_S



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Anal Sex, Angry Sex, BDSM, Canon Era, DOMLuke, Dom/sub, F/M, Gratuitous Smut, Heartache, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Jealousy, Light BDSM, Magic healing Force sex, Oral Sex, Rough Sex, SUBMara, Self-Harm, Sex Club, Spanking, dubcon, ish, tropetastic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2017-02-11
Packaged: 2018-09-10 15:24:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 33,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8922361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Just_S/pseuds/Just_S
Summary: 'You won't be frightened with me, Mara. I won't have you whimpering on my table and have to wonder if it's with passion or fear. I won't bring you to harm. But that doesn't mean I won't push you. Whatever you got from those cantina cretins will come to seem like child's play compared to what we do in these rooms. That is why you must choose this. The power is yours, until you give it to me.'
AKA, Luke uses sex to save the damsel in distress. What could possibly go wrong?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> ~~In the interests of honesty, I don't know where I'm going with this. I wrote four solid chapters a month or so back, then found myself in a corner, and haven't quite had the energy to work my way back out. <br />~~   
>  ~~I'm posting it here in hopes of gaining motivation to do so.~~
> 
> Update: It's finished!
> 
> Also, note the warnings. Graphic & gratuitous smut is highly likely. Plot, less so.
> 
> Gratitude to Frangipani and BananasforParties, whose L/M fics I consume like crack, & who have likely had more than a little influence on everything I've written here.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Let's start in the middle, then wind back to what came before. It can be more fun that way, don't you think?

_'Would you care for a drink?'_  
  
He steps to a sideboard, splashes amber liquid into a couple of glasses. Raises one to his lips.

She shakes her head mutely as he lets his gaze travel slowly down her form. Her dress is clinging with rain, transparent in places where it sticks to her skin underneath. Eyes cast down, wet and shivering in the middle of his living room, he considers how much it has cost her to come here tonight. That knocking on his door was, in itself, an act of submission. Luke sips at his whisky & smiles to himself.

 _'Take off your dress'_  he orders, and has to mask his surprise when she complies without hesitation. He walks in a slow circle, appraising her from all angles as she lifts it over her head, bunches it up in her hands. Sees the shiver run over her spine and goosebumps spring up down her arms. Wonders if it's the cold of the rain or the heat of his gaze.

 

 _'A few ground rules'_ , he says, half smiling, stopping still just in front of her. He's still a few strides distant from where she stands, cold & vulnerable in damp underwear, her hair dripping steadily onto his carpet. 

_'You won't call me master. Use my name or call me Sir - there is to be no confusion with my academy role.'_

She swallows and nods.  
  
_'Do whatever I tell you, and you'll get what you need. Disobey and I'll keep you wanting. You'll need a safe word - and I want you to tell me your hard limits now.'_  
  
She looks up at this, askance, like a startled jawa in speeder lights.

"Limits?" she says, and then quickly - "I don't have any." He quirks a eyebrow, and she drops her gaze down. "I never really have much of a choice" she offers, and then he's right by her, lifting her chin with one firm, decisive finger.  
  
_'You **always** have a choice'_ , he says, eyes locking onto hers. _'Every time you come to me, whenever I touch you, you are making a choice. One word - let's go with 'hyperdrive' - aloud or through the Force, & I'll make it all stop. Understand?'_  
  
She hesitates, and he frowns.  
  
_'What is it?'_ He sounds impatient,  & she's surprised to find herself worried by it. Worried he might change his mind.  
  
"If I have a choice, then it's not..."  
  
He waits for her to finish, then finally supplies - _'Not a punishment?'_ She bites her lip, nods minutely.   
  
_'You won't be frightened with me, Mara. I won't have you whimpering on my table and have to wonder if it's with passion or fear. I won't bring you to harm. But that doesn't mean I won't push you. Whatever you got from those cantina cretins will come to seem like child's play compared to what we do in these rooms. That is why you must choose this. The power is yours, until you give it to me.'_  
  
His words release a sharp sensation in the core of her belly. Taking a moment to process, she nods in assent.  
"Ok then," she offers, and then, as an appeasement -"Sir".  
  
A slow smile creeps across his face at her wording, and he sets down his whisky glass.  
_'Very well then. Get into the bedroom and kneel on my bed.'_  
  
\---

He sits behind her and ties her wrists. He's not gentle - pulling her arms back, using synthetic rope that sings like electricity when it drags against her skin. She likes it. She'd like to feel a little more. He tugs her underwear down without speaking, pushes her forward onto her face as he draws them down her legs.  
  
_'Ass up'_ he commands, and she struggles to oblige, an awkward kneeling position at best. She hears him open a closet, sees him toss out a bag. He sifts through it a moment then draws out a paddle - black, heavy, glossy - and returns to the bed. One hand under her hip, he draws her rear higher still. She's exposed and vulnerable, and yet, not the least bit afraid. A trickle of excitement begins to stir between her legs. Then his hand is gliding over her, smoothing along the curve of her bottom. Two hands, stroking, squeezing, reverential and soft.  
  
' _You've got a beautiful ass, Mara Jade'_ and face still in the blankets, she shakes her head in denial. She is grabbed sharply by the hair and yanked back up against him, as he leans to hiss fiercely in her ear.  
  
_'When I pay you a compliment, I don't expect you to argue. Say 'thank you' like a good pet - come on now, let me hear it.'_    
  
With the faintest of tremors, she does as he asks. "Thank you sir. I'm.. I'm glad that it pleases you."  
  
_'That's better'_   he says, softly, placing a kiss to the back of her neck as he let's her drop to her front once again. _'You're a beautiful woman & I won't hear you say otherwise. You should own every power you possess.'_  
  
And then, without preamble, he strikes her hard against the buttock with a searing sharp pain. It sounds out a sharp crack in the room, and she lets loose a cry against the blankets in her face. Immediately his hand is covering the skin, soothing it, warm. She sees the paddle drop to the bed beside her, sees it's weight and it's size.  
  
_'How many, Mara Jade?'_ he asks, liltingly. ' _How many until you beg me to stop?'_

"More" is all she can manage, breathless with shock, & he's ready to oblige - raining short, sharp smacks against the staccato beat of her desperate gasps. He pauses, lets the sensation sink in. All blood is rushing to her rear, leaving her dizzy, lightheaded despite her inverted position. She registers both tears and elation - a fierce rush of endorphins surging through her veins, rich and sweet like molasses. & then he resumes, and she can no longer think of anything. Cannot even distinguish one strike from the next. She feels herself sinking deeper and deeper; the fire on her skin like emotional bacta. With every jerk of her body, every crack of the paddle, she feels cleaner, more pure. This is what she's been searching for since the Emperor died. This pain, the submission. He pauses again and she closes her eyes, lets the humming pain soothe her like a screaming red lullaby. She can feel the lines where her skin threatens to break open and bleed. She can feel her heartbeat all over her ass.  
  
And then suddenly, something else - something wet and hot and impossibly intimate. His hands are spreading her open and she feels his tongue pushing in, sliding into her labia. She squirms, but his hands are firm against her scarlet skin, and the contrast is visceral. He slides a warm, rough finger inside her, then another, slips his mouth over her clitoris and draws it into his mouth. He's devouring her roughly, the stubble of his chin stinging sharply where it grazes her tortured ass. His face is fucking her fully - she has never felt so exposed, never anything so intimate. And all the while, he keeps those fingers working. Not thrusting or stretching, just rubbing her slowly, deeply inside. Stroking & sucking, increasing the pressure, and with a growing quickening sensation she sees starkly where all this is headed.

"No!"

He lifts his head, and she can feel his smirk through the force.  
_'What was that, my pet? Did you just tell me 'no'?'_   He keeps his fingers within her, slowly working. Slowly, slowly.

"I... I don't want to come. Sir." biting the pronoun out with a degree of reluctance. "I didn't come for that. I... I want you to hurt me."  
  
He doesn't break his rhythm, still broadcasts that smug little smile.  
  
_'If you fear the pleasure more than the pain, then which is the greater punishment? You must see my dilemma here.'_  
  
Slowly, slowly. She's panting now, pushing against his hand even as she tries to pull away. It's been so long, so _very very_ long since she's allowed herself this pleasure. She can't let it break open now. It's against every one of her rules.  
  
"I don't want you to, Luke." She feels his thumb begin to stroke against her clitoris. "Please..."  
  
_'But your pussy wants me to, Mara. It seems your body's more than eager for what I can offer it...',_  and for emphasis he twists his fingers, the sound of her juices wet and lewd.  
  
She hears herself moaning, drawing the sheets between teeth to try to muffle reluctant cries. Her control is slipping, her hips grinding into his movements, breaths coming fast, hard and ragged.  
  
_'Come for me, Jade,'_ he commands lowly, tugging her to him by her knotted wrists. _'Let me hear you scream'._  
  
He adds one final finger beside the others  & she slips over the edge, sobbing, gasping, roaring with lust. Feels herself gush uncontrollably against his hand with each rhythmic contraction; dripping down her thighs, drenching the bed beneath her. She comes hard and long and he's behind her all the while, stroking her, murmuring incongruently soft words over the thrum of her heart.  
The world bleeds white for a while, and then he's before her, lifting her shoulders, wiping at tears with his thumbs.  
He takes his fingers, still slick with her orgasm and glides them into her gasping mouth.  
She sucks hungrily on instinct.  
  
_'Good girl'_ , he says, _'get it all_. _That's the taste of your pleasure, Jade, & I'm going to teach you to crave it.' _


	2. Chapter 2

It was supposed to be 'work drinks'.  
Just her and a few NRI folk from her Smuggler's Alliance work - a Rhodian, some new girl, a handful of the guys. She doesn't know any of them well but Force knows she needed a drink, and she socialises best with a little cool distance. Makes for an easier exit should she spot someone interesting; back with Karrde, the crew always made that sort of thing difficult. Like she was their virginal kid sister, for Sith's sake.  
So she goes, and she smiles, and she scans the bar surreptitiously. 

& then Skywalker strolls in.

She can't think why he's here, but it transpires he knows this crowd - of course he does - and was invited to join them tonight. From the nudges and smirks, she spots the sly subtext - new-girl-meets-famous-jedi-hero at the hands of her colleagues, & they waste no time in shoving the two of them together. Luke blushing a little but charming her anyway. Mara throws back her drink and scans the bar for a mark.

Perhaps that's a little predatory, but she's come to think of them that way - a target, a hit. She plays her role and gets what she needs, then they're gone from her life by the morning. It's not so different to her days as the Emperor's Hand, though she tends to leave these ones breathing more often. Not that they deserve it.

There's a burst of laughter from Luke and the girl - what is she, 19? 20 at best - and Mara aburptly sets her mind on the tall man at the bar. He's huge - well over 6 foot, with a wide set of shoulders implying raw brute strength. He's also a good way towards wasted, but so much the better. She doesn't have a whole lot of energy tonight.

Indicating her empty glass, she leaves the table without looking back, snakes her way round to the bar. As the mark lifts his drink to take another swig, she dips nimbly into his space, causing the glass to jerk & his ale to splash cold down his arm.

'Watch it!" he growls, and then stops, drunken gaze slowly clearing to take all of her in. From that height he should get an eyeful of cleavage, and the leather trousers were proving to be an inspired choice for a Friday at the office. She tucks her hair behind one ear and smoothes into her most innocent face.

"Oh, I'm so sorry. Wont you please let me buy you another?"

And just like that, he is hers. 

Over the course of the next drink he becomes increasingly eager and handsy. His gaze is predatory, leaning in close, sniffing her like prey - and she plays her part easily: part brazen, part pure. There's a particular type of girl these men like to go for, she's found. They want just enough spirit to crush.

By the bottom of the glass he's inviting her home, and now she does spare a glance back to her colleagues across the room. Skywalker's holding the empties, asking the Fluff what she'd like with a tilt of his head, and it's definitely time that she made her escape.

"Sure", she tells her companion. "Can we go right now?"

They get as far as the shadowy entrance hall before he has her against the wall, his hands on her breasts, his meaty tongue pushed in her mouth. Her tastes like ale and cigarillo ash and she surpresses a retch, tries to focus on the push of his thighs & his hands' racking administrations.  
Maybe she'll let the games start early tonight. Time to up the ante, then.

Pushing him off, she pleads, 'wait, I don't want..', and is instantly rewarded with a backhanded crack across the cheek. Squeezing her chin in his hand, his hot, sour breath in her face as he growls out, 'I don't give a kriff what you want, little girl. Now behave or I won't be so gentle.'

Mara adjusts her jaw, feels the pain radiate down through her cheekbone & into her skull. She suppresses a laugh; the first hit of the evening always does this, turns her giddy like a sudden dose of Spice. But it fades just as fast, and she knows tonight she'll need a lot just to keep that high. Fortunately, it seems her new friend will happily oblige.

He's tugging her along, and they're almost at the door when she senses a presence. Stood behind them, silent; she can't help but turn to confirm it. He's watching with calm blue eyes, and for a moment she thinks he might leave them to it, but then he's calling to her companion and commanding them both to stop walking.

The man turns around slowly, unsteadily, leering down on Luke's compact form. There's over a foot of height difference between them, for all that it matters.

"You what?" laughs the mark, his aggression ramping rapidly. "This ain't none of your business."

"Mara's a friend of mine", Skywalker responds, with infinite calm. "She won't be going home with you tonight."  
He could've put a little Force behind it, a little suggestion, but that isn't Luke's style of course. Mediation first. Always that kriffing Jedi honour. 

The beefcake looks to Mara, as if surprised to learn she has a name. 

"I don't think that's up to you" he laughs in Luke's direction, then tugs Mara roughly by her hand into the street.

The airspeeders are hissing by on wet tarmac, and he is scouring the streets for a taxi when the light flashes green. Luke's activated his saber, held casually to one side, and this time he puts the Force in his words as he says,

"She'll be coming with me now."

The guy's so wasted it's impossible for him to look any more glazed. Still, she sees the recognition in his eyes, the exact second when the words take hold of his thoughts. The moment he decides against her.

She whirls on Luke as her evening's entertainment beats a lumbering, disinterested retreat.

"How kriffing DARE you?!" 

She is seething, her eyes livid with green fury. Luke sets his jaw and guides her gently by the elbow, steering them towards a damp alley away from the street. He keeps his back to the roadway, hand on her arm, his face soft & impassive.

"You egotistical, condescending, Sith-spawned bastard! Who died and made you the morality police? How dare you interfere with my private life like that??'

He doesn't flinch, doesn't rise to her temper. His voice when he speaks is both calm and measured.

'You didn't want to go home with him.'

"What the hell do you know about what I want? How could you even - "

'I could feel you, Mara" He cuts her off. 'I could sense you recoiling whenever he touched you. I could feel you forcing yourself not to throw him off.'

She could deny it, but it's a futile gesture.

"Stay the fuck out of my head, Skywalker.' She pushes past him to leave, but he holds her in place with a locked, steady arm.

"Why are you doing this, Mara? Why do you hurt yourself?"

There's the burning of tears behind her eyes, but she'll turn her blade on him before she'll let him see her cry.

"You don't know anything", she hisses. "I needed this. I needed this, and now you have taken it from me."

Perhaps if she leaves now she can still track the guy down. Start again; talk him around. But the insufferable Jedi is showing no sign of letting her go.

'You're punishing yourself.' It's not a question, just a conclusion, a jigsaw piece dropped into place.  
'Not like this, Mara. This isn't safe.'

"Safe??" She chokes out a brittle laugh. "Nothing we do is safe. This is no different to the hellbound situations you throw yourself into when real life gets too much. At least I don't drag the rest of the galaxy down in my need for a kick."

He takes a step towards her. "I won't let you put yourself in danger like this."

She yanks her arm from his grip, feels adrenaline surge through her limbs at his wording.

"You won't LET me? You don't get a say in what I do or don't do, Jedi. You know nothing about me. You couldn't possibly understand."

She pushes past him with force, storming back towards the roadway, but he is on her before she is past the shadows, gripping her shoulders, backing her into the brickwork.  
His voice is low, and that serene Jedi calm has all but vanished, his gaze burning into hers.

"I understand it all, Jade. I understand the pain; how it feels to be so well acquainted with agony that you find a quiet space within it. What it is to crave that like narcotics; how it wakes you in the night like a siren song. I know how it feels to have lived your life in control, clinging tightly to every last thing so that it won't all unravel and fall apart. I know the rush like a freefall when someone else takes the reigns & you stop having to think, just for a while. I know more about your motivations than you ever will, and I know that you're doing it all wrong."

Mara catches her breath, reeling. This is not a speech she ever thought to hear this man make. This is not a conversation she's even managed with herself before now.

Finally, quietly, but heavy with sarcasm, she spits out, "so what's right then, wise Jedi Master?"

He regards her carefully, his breathing just a little too fast and deep. His eyes scan her face, his force sense brushes slowly over her own. He's weighing her up, thinking her over.

Finally he says, "I can show you."

She laughs; not with humour, but at the sheer impossibility of the words he just said.

"You? You can show me?"

He takes a step back, calm descending over his features again. 

"There are better ways to do this. Better ways to get what you want. You know where to find me if you would like to be educated."

He turns on his heel and walks out into the street without once looking back. As he disappears around the corner, the sky starts to growl with overhead thunder, and the heavens open in a heavy deluge of rain.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Second encounter.

The next evening he is ready for her.

He isn't sure she will come - not at first. He's been sensing her turmoil since she left last night, the roiling confusion over all that had transpired. Because she does _want_  to come back; that much was clear before he'd even untied her. She's just reluctant to pay his price.

He has no guilt over forcing her pleasure this way; she'd had the safe word after all, and he'd promised to push her boundaries.

Still, her reaction surprised him. He wonders what at all she'd been taking from her bar encounters besides bruises and beer. Recognises the temptation within himself to try and fix things he has no business meddling with. Old habits die hard.

When he'd first offered to help, he'd thought only of her safety. Her safety and ok, perhaps partly his own lust, quietly burning beneath his skin since the first time they'd met.

That they'd both stumbled onto similar paths to pleasure was no great surprise. They'd both known pain like most people would never suffer. They both had fought hard for control of their wildfire lives.

So he makes plans for her return, whether she shows up or not.

 

Past 10pm, when the whisky is warm and his optimism fading, he hears her gentle knock.

He has to bite down a foolish farmboy grin as he moves to the door. Slipping silently aside to let her in, he closes the door & steps flush behind her.

Her hair is in loose, messy waves, which he pushes over one shoulder to expose a stretch of alabaster neck.

'You came back," he states softly, and she nods in assent. The only movement is the play of his breath against the tiny hairs on her neck. The room is dense with silence.

"Take off your clothes and get onto my table." He turns to collect his drink and his senses as she quietly complies. Tonight he will take her. His arousal is high, his pulse audible in his veins.

Turning back, it spikes higher still: she is leaning over the wooden tabletop presenting herself to him. Her ass is still pink from the previous night, a few streaks of red from the hard paddle edge.

She hisses as he runs warm palms over the blooming bruises; pushes back into his touch all the same.

"More tonight Jade, or do you need time to recover?"

It's a concession he wouldn't usually give, but then this is not his usual circumstance.

"More" she responds with urgency. "More like last night. Please."

So that will be that.

Brushing his hand to the curls between her legs, he can't help but provoke her a little. "Really? _Exactly_ like last night? Very well then."

From a box below the table he draws out a soft leather flogger. It's a fat cat o nine tails in dark ash-grey bantha hide; exquisite, expensive, deceptively soft.

He sees her glance over her shoulder to take it in.

"Let's go for ten, shall we? Count them out for me, Mara."

And he raises the whip in his right hand. The tails have a different bite to the paddle - more like a sting, or like nine of them. By stroke number six she is struggling to count aloud, falling back on their force connection to keep tally in his mind.

By ten she has lost it: gasping and keening, her need damp and fragrant between her legs. Her mind may be here for the whipping, but her body has other ideas. Silently, Forcefully, she begs him for more.

Luke takes a long, deep breath; centres himself to keep from taking her there and then. Neither of them have earned that yet.

From the box he draws out a brand new toy - a long, flexiplast phallus with a flared suction base. He purchased this today, specifically for this occasion.

As she stares, pupils flaring, he licks the base and slaps it down on the tabletop between them.

"Ride it," he states, and watches the tension play over her face. He calls the whip to his hand.

"Ride it, and you'll get what you came for."

Pushing up on all fours, she kneels over the dildo and positions herself above it.

He watches her roll her hips, lining things up, nudging the tip just so, then sitting up fully, before dropping down and impaling herself on its firm, heavy length. She sits a moment, breathing, adjusting, then slowly pushes up for another long thrust.

He draws back the cat' and rains down his approval.

She can take even less than he'd expected with the two sensations combined. Within minutes she is keening, falling forwards onto her arms as her legs dissolve uselessly beneath her. Her whole body trembles with unreleased tension, and her ass and lower back glow a violent, searing pink.

He lifts her hips with two gentle hands, up and over, moving the phallus aside and helping her roll onto her back. Careful to keep her raw skin from the table edge, he pulls her towards him and stands between her legs, pushing her knees out as wide as he can.

She is lost - moaning, quietly & continuously; eyes half closed, head rolling from side to side. She doesn't seem to notice when he unzips himself, pulls out his aching, hour-long hardness, but she sparks to alertness when he lines it up against her drooling entrance.

"Ask me for it, Jade" he breathes, and she chokes back a sob, writhing and pushing her wetness against him. He draws back just enough to break the contact & leave her flailing against empty air.

"Ask me."

Her words are rasped out through dry lips, barely audible, but there, all the same.

"Please. Please fuck me," and then he is surging into her, lost in her wet heat, her moans & cries, her tightness.

"Jade." He'a trying to go slow, eeking out every possible sensation and friction.

"You've no idea how long I've waited for this. This beautiful pussy. You are wasted on anyone but me".

And she nods, like she agrees, like she'd agree to anything right now if he will. Just. Keep. Thrusting.

He can feel she is close, feel her telltale twitches and clenching around his cock. But he can tell, too, that she's stopping herself; holding it back, determined to suffer the pain without the pleasure tonight.

Well then, she has more willpower than him, Luke smirks, as he pounds towards his release.

Gripping her hips to keep her steady, he slams their bodies together, driven on by her cries & her flaring force-sense of arousal. And then he feels the rushing, the contraction and release of his own slow-built orgasm, and draws out just in time to empty himself over her abdomen, hot and thick, with an unchecked groan of lustful pleasure.

Leaning forward he rests his sweaty head against her forehead, careful to avoid his own mess. Both work to catch their breath.

Even as he wilts inside her he can feel her muscles clinging to him, tensing and squeezing, her body still craving release. A release she refuses to permit it.

When he withdraws, she pushes up on her elbows to rise too, but he holds her in place with a firm hand.

"You're not done, Mara Jade. Did you think you could win this so easily?"

Holding one hand low on her abdomen, both for restraint and a little pelvic pressure, he retrieves the dildo from earlier and gives it a comedic wiggle in the air.

"I might not be able to outlast you, but our little friend here should be up to the task".

Ignoring her plaintive protestations, he begins to stoke her fire in sure and steady strokes. She is dripping now, the table slick beneath her bottom, her naked chest heaving for breath. His spunk runs off her in glossy streams, mixing with her fluids on the table to leave her slippery and slick.

As he adds a little pressure to her clitoris she begins to buck her hips, flailing against his hands like a captured wild thing.

"Stop fighting it, Mara. You knew this would happen when you came here tonight. You don't leave until I see you come for me."

And then quickly, without warning, he withdraws. Moves a pace away, slick toy in hand, watching her flail and wimper on his tabletop. He could watch this all night.

He leaves just enough time for her senses to begin to clear, then he is on her again, resuming the game, and dropping a few short slaps to her wet, engorged clitoris. It's got to hurt like hell, but it does the trick.

Suddenly she is screaming, back arched, completely lost, while Luke watches enraptured. She clenches so hard the phallus slides out of her and hits the floor somewhere behind him - and still she is coming and coming. It seems like minutes before it subsides.

She is left panting, then gasping and then she slips into sobs. Something constricts painfully in Luke's throat and he is pulling her up, wrapping his arms around her, tucking her head under his chin.

"You did good", he tells her gently, stroking her hair with a calloused palm. "You did so good for me, Mara."

She's trying hard to suppress her tears, and he wants to chastise her, remind her that holding back the inevitable only makes it all the harder when the dam finally breaks. But it's a lesson she's already had once for tonight, & he decides better of pushing the point.

While she wipes her eyes, he fetches a blanket and the remains of his earlier drink. She gulps down the whisky, hissing as it burns down her throat.

She's rapidly recomposing herself; the vulnerability passing, the walls locking back into place. Another few minutes and she'll be out of the sub-space altogether.

So before it happens; before she dresses and curses and leaves, he gives one final command.

"Don't shower until you're back with me, Mara. I want you to smell of me until I can have you again."

She meets his eye and something, some fierce understanding burns between them for a second. Then she glances away, nods, drains the glass, sets it down.

Five minutes later she is gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the amazing comments, which have massively motivated me to wrestle with the mess I had tangled myself into with later chapters. It's moving forward again :)
> 
> The hopeless L/M shipper in me just wants to whisk them straight to happily ever after, but these two are a bit too complicated for simple endings. I guess we will see in good time... x


	4. Chapter 4

Mara is late. She is _never_ late; can count on one hand the times this has happened before. On one finger, for Sith's sake. Karrde is going to be ribbing her for weeks over this.  
  
Working to calm herself even as she pelts down the marble corridor, she weaves a cover story out of speeder traffic and half-truths. It's not their business anyway; maybe she'll say nothing at all. Certainly, she can't confess the truth: that she was kept awake all night by her body's urgent need for release. That she'd only avoided Skywalker's ministrations for one lousy night, and already her body was screaming out for him. Which is exactly why she determined to sever their arrangement. She refuses to need anyone.

Pausing a moment to steady her breath and smooth her countenance, she hits the door release and stalks into the meeting. All heads swivel her way, but she holds her head high and maintains a nonchalant stride around the table... until her stomach drops.  
What in Sith's name is he doing here? This is her meeting, and he is _not_ on the agenda.

"Skywalker."  Her voice sounds thick to her own ears, but with luck no-one else will have the prescience to notice.  "To what do we owe this honour?"  
  
He leans back casually in his chair, stretches his fingertips together.

"I just missed your sunny countenance, Ms Jade" he grins, garnering snickers from around the table. Perhaps there's a hidden meaning - _'where were you last night?'_  . She doesn't give a kriff.

Unblinking, she stares him down, awaiting a more appropriate response. Whatever might be happening in his bed, this is her workplace and she expects respect. Demands it, in fact. Messing with her professional life was not part of the arrangement.  
  
Perhaps he senses her mood, as he hastily relents. "I was asked to fill in for the commissary. He's been detained on diplomatic work of my creation, so this was something of an appeasement. We'd all but given up on you arriving" he adds, one eyebrow raised in silent question.

She moves to her seat, sits primly, activates her datapad. "Apologies to you all; I had an early workout, & there was a queue for the showers."

It's a lousy excuse, but it's worth taking that hit to see Luke's eyes widen marginally as he processes her words. In showering she had openly defied him, and judging from the faintest crease to his brow, he isn't quite sure what to make of it.  
  
"Now gentlemen," she says turning back to the room. The new girl from the bar is there too, but Mara doesn't pause to correct her pronoun. "Care to inform me what I've missed?"

 

...

 

A couple of hours in & they break for caff. The room scatters into small clusters, murmured conversations, people checking their comms. Mara avoids being drawn in and makes a beeline for the drinks machine - her sleepless night weighs heavy on her lashline, & she's ready for a boost.

 "I've missed you."

Breathed into her ear as she lifts the pot, so she has to lock her spine to stop the shiver that threatens. Immediately a warm and liquid want begins to sing between her thighs, which she pushes resolutely away. This much need is toxic.

"So you mentioned," she responds blandly, stirring sugar into her caf. "How simply awful for you."  
  
She hasn't forgiven him for this little appearance. It's all far too convenient. Without so much as a glance to his face, she's lifting her cup and turning to walk away, only to find her cool entrance blocked by a simpering infant in a sugar pink tunic. The new girl. Excellent. And lo, now she's opening her mouth to speak.

"Hi again Luke. I had a lot of fun last night."

With a pang of something unnameable, Mara processes the words. Last night. The night she had stayed away. & Is it her imagination or does Luke look a little panicked?

Casting her mind to the night at the bar, she recalls these two in cozy conversation, the intermittent bursts of laughter shared. Well, so much the better then. She already knew they couldn't continue; this just removes any remaining temptation.

"Excuse me," she says, suddenly feeling all of her tiredness, her lack of release, the small, tight space of the meeting chamber. "I have a call I must make." She's almost at the door when the lumbering Twi'lek from Accounts steps back and jostles into her shoulder. Reactions muddied by fatigue, her drink splashes over her arm and chest, scalding hot, still steaming on her skin. She bites back a scream of frustration and pain.

Luke's at her side within seconds, no doubt catching her distress through the Force. He's pulling her by the elbow into the hush of the corridor, & by the time she's found the words to dismiss him he's tugged open the heavy marble door of a single staff refresher.

"I'm fine, Jedi" she bites, yanking her arm back to her side. "I'll clean up and be back shortly" back turned, tone clipped, but he's following her in; closing the door, hitting the lock pad behind them.

"Take off your tunic." She blinks at him, aghast. How dare he? 

"You've got a nerve, you son of a filth-eating--"

"It's soaked Mara. I'll put it on the drying unit for you."

Oh. It would be churlish to play for modesty now, so she crosses her arms and tugs the shirt over her head. Her chest is still stinging from the scald but she ignores it, moves to drape the tunic on the dryer herself. Behind her, Luke runs the water in the sink, tests the temperature with a hand.

"Come here" he says, gentle, and lifts up a cold and wet compress to her glowing, scarlet skin. "You need to take the heat out".

Funny, because for all the coolness of the compress, the air seems to be hotter than a moment ago. His hand lifts, re-folds the cloth, drops a little lower than her clavicle. It occurs to her that he's never touched her breasts, and the thought hits that she wants is to correct this. Wants it in a sharp and visceral way.

Judging by Luke's hitched breathing he's having similar thoughts. His hand clenches around the flannel, squeezing in tension - or perhaps by intent - and rivulets of cold water run over the swell of her breasts. Between this and the coffee, her bra is soaked, her nipples pushing forward against the barely-there fabric. He swallows, looks to her eyes for some sort of confirmation, which he seems to decide he has found. Wordlessly, he unclasps the garment and slides the straps down her arms.

They stand, breathing, a barrier of air between her bare chest and him. With all they've already done, this should be nothing, but as he grazes the backs of his hands down her breasts, it feels like he's setting her on fire. He meets her eyes again and she sees he is similarly afflicted. There's an intensity to his gaze and breathing she's finding hard to believe.

He moves his thumbs to graze over her nipples and she can't help the soft moan that escapes from her throat.

The sound of passing laughter in the corridor outside breaks the moment open. They're in a _NRI bathroom_! People saw them come in here - there could be surveillance cameras for sithssake! What the hell was she thinking?!

Her tunic is still damp but she throws it on anyway, stuffs the bra into her pocket. Luke still hasn't moved when she turns back around, and he takes a moment longer to catch up with the change. Stepping forward, he reaches for her hand. "Come back to me Mara. Tonight. I'd really like you to."

Mutely, heart pounding, she nods her head. Whatever she thought she was doing by staying away, it makes no sense to her now. Of course she will go. She will do anything he says. Squeezing her hand, he nods. "Good" he smiles, eyes sparkling. "Because I bought you a present."

 

\---

 

By 8pm she can't wait any more. It makes sense to go later - when the hallways are quiet, when there's nobody to see. It makes sense to make him sweat, but for some reason she finds that she cannot.

She's made a little effort tonight, too - worn her raciest lingerie; barely-there black lace with full stockings to match. There's really no cause for it, she tells herself firmly, but she is quietly confident that his previous night's date won't own anything so provocative.

That thought causes her to pause; had he really replaced her so quickly? And what the kriff does she care, at any rate? He's asked to come back, and so she will. The rest is none of her business.

Arriving at his apartment, she knocks firmly and waits. He opens the door in grey sweatpants; his chest bare and his hair damp. She's immediately very glad she came.

He gestures her inside, closing the door firmly, then stands with his back to her, staring at its blankness a beat. She opens her mouth to speak, but then isn't quite sure what to say, and so closes it again. She waits.

"I'm glad you came."

He's still facing the door, collecting himself, and she feels a shiver of nervousness creep across her shoulders. He sounds... oddly cold. Different. Then he turns, fists clenched lightly at his sides, and steps swiftly towards her.

He slides a hand to her throat, holding loosely. There's only a breath of pressure there, nothing at all, but she's finding it hard to swallow somehow.

"You defied me."

She ought to refute. Should say she intended to never come back, that she was hardly going to refrain from showering for the rest of her life. Ought to lay into him for his little performance in her meeting that morning. Instead, she simply nods.

"There will have to be consequences" he is saying, "if there is to be trust," and as she feels herself growing damp and hot, she wonders if this wasn't her plan all along. Push him a little, amp up the punishment. She can't be sure either way any more.

"In the bedroom" he barks coldly. "Dress off. Wait on all fours until I say you can move."

She silently obliges, undressing down to her underwear, facing away from the door. She considers the bed for a moment, then kneels on the cream soft pile rug instead, assuming the position as requested. She waits silently, heart thumping loud in the quiet of the room. The minutes stretch by slowly. She hears him moving about the apartment, glasses clinking, the flush of the refresher. Tapping at the holonet station, perhaps the squeak of his chair. He's making her wait, half naked on her knees on his bedroom floor, and the humiliation hits in a not-unwelcome rush.

When he finally opens the door and strides in, she hears him hiss in a breath.

"That's quite the outfit you've got there, Jade" he says, voice gravelly and low. She looks at him over her shoulder and offers a smile.

"I wore it for you."

He approaches slowly; kneels behinds her, ghosts his fingertips up her thighs.

"I will still have to punish you, of course."

She thrills a little a the thought. The marks from their previous sessions have all but faded, her time on the hard meeting chairs today giving just an occasional twinge. The void he had filled is yawning open once again.

"But perhaps your gift will be useful for that."

Her mind begins to consider the options - a flogger? some clamps? - but his next words derail her train of thought.

"Where were you last night?"

She swallows, sighs. "I had things to attend to. It seems you did as well, so don't pretend you were lonesome."

He frowns for a moment, then half his mouth lifts in a smile.

"Oh, you must mean _Tessara_. She's sweet, don't you think?"

His confirmation makes her stomach clench, but Mara Jade is not the jealous kind. This is just sex - an education, that's what he'd called it. She knows better than to confuse lust with anything more, so she snorts out derisively -

"Not to my taste, to be honest."

He laughs at that. "She is very... innocent, I agree."

He couldn't have picked a sharper blade with which to cleave the two women apart. If there is one thing Mara has never been it is innocent, or pure. It's why she's here, hoping he'll smack her senseless and leave her limp. It's why girls like Tessara bore her to tears.

"I can't imagine she's all that experienced at this sort of treatment" she replies evenly, swaying her hips just a little for effect.

Luke takes the cue, grasps her by the waist and pushes his clothed hardness against her groin.

"Oh, no. She's much too pure for this sort of play. Girls like Tessara have a set of expectations, I find. I took her for dinner, did the chivalry thing."

And there, there's the bitter root of all her discomfort made clear. Because the new girl - prim and pure and sweetly innocent, gets romanced, made to feel special and rare. Whereas Mara... Mara's on the floor like the soiled waste she is. From back alley to his bed without so much as a kiss; she isn't worth anything more, no point wasting the good stuff on her.

The furnace of self loathing flares up inside of her, and she has to breathe through a desire to sob or to scream. Swallowing it, she bites out,

"Get things moving Jedi, or I'll move myself home. I didn't come here for your small talk."

Luke frowns a little at her sudden change of mood, of perhaps at her insubordinate tone, but then he seems to let it go. He moves to the dresser and pulls open a drawer to retrieve a matte black box. Sitting in front of her, he slides it between where her palms press against the rug.

"Sit", he says. "Open it." She is under no illusions; knows whatever is inside, it's not a genuine gift. Lifting the lid, she unveils a short black rubber dildo. Its base is flared wide, growing thicker in the middle, tapering to a softened point. She has a feeling she knows exactly where this is headed.

"It's a plug, for your ass" he tells her evenly. "Ever tried anything like this before?"

"No", she says softly. "I believe it's more of an... outer rim activity" - and then, catching herself - "if you'll excuse the pun."

Luke laughs. "Take off your underwear" he tells her, smoothing thick, clear lubricant onto the sturdy black toy. She might be fearful if she weren't so empty and cold. A little violation might bring back the life to her.

"It may hurt a little, if it's your first time," he is saying, "but I doubt you'll complain about that, somehow."

He moves his lubed hand to between her buttocks, beginning to circle her tight, darkened rosebud. He slips a fingertip in and back out, just a little - repeats the gesture with increasing pressure. It feels ok - nice even - until he switches to the cold nose of the rubber toy. This is thicker, and harder, and much less precise. He is breathing heavily as he eases it in, visibly aroused, and Mara bites her lip to keep from spoiling it with sound. There's a burning sensation, a deep ache of muscle being forced, and she's a breath away from asking him to stop when she feels it slides home with a physical 'pop'. Luke is breathing hard, running his hand over the base where it nestles in her ass like he can't quite believe that she took it. Her whole body shivers with goosebumps, her nipples spring to fullness. The plug feels cold and tight; very wrong and very very erotic. Every move of her hips makes it all the more so.

He pulls her knickers back up over her bottom, gives it a well placed pat where the toy protrudes against the fabric.

"Now Mara Jade. I would like you to get dressed and come out with me for dinner."

Oh, this man is a Sith, for sure. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "A new comment on AO3" emails are my new addiction. Thanks so much for your feedback! 
> 
> Big thanks to my beta, cheerleader and all-around angel, JadedSkywalker. <3


	5. Chapter 5

If walking out of the palace apartment block was an experience for Mara, it is nothing compared to the speeder ride. Luke keeps one hand on her thigh the whole way, the other on the driving controls. He is flushed and full of energy; high on arousal and dominance, the fresh night air in his face.

Mara cant work out how to sit. Flat on her bottom and it she is uncompromisingly aware of the plug; thrust deep inside of her, firm and unyielding. Sit to the side and it twists around in a distracting array of movements. Despite her best efforts it is arousing her beyond reason, and her tight black underwear is already damp beneath her dress.

She's never going to make it through dinner.

To exacerbate things, Luke has steered them to one of the fanciest restaurants within reach. It's relaxed and modern but extremely exclusive; there are a couple of paparazzi loitering by the door as they drop the speeder off with a valet. She can't think too hard about this as they walk in, heads down.

"Back again, Master Skywalker!" the Maitre D remarks, looking up from his datapad at the front desk. "Two nights in a row - we're most certainly honoured."

Mara feels a sinking feeling that flatly douses her arousal. He's brought her to the same place as his date.

As they're led to their table, he puts his hand on the small of her back, and she flinches away. His eyes crease in surprise, but he doesn't repeat the gesture. Once seated (awkwardly, carefully), Luke lifts the menu.

"I had the steak last time" he remarks, and she is drenched in the desire to stand up and leave. She cannot do this. Humiliation gets her off, sure, but not like this - dragging his plaything in the wake of real life. Tramping through the footprints of worthier women. She signed up for the physical and this is all brutal emotion.

"Why did you bring me here?" Even she is surprised at the abject misery in her voice. He looks up at her aghast.

"Mara..."

She blinks, looks around for a place to excuse herself. She needs this damn plug out, needs this whole charade to end. Needs to trust her instincts and stay well away in future. She gathers her things with clumsy movements - her com, her bag, her fragmented self respect.

He reaches for her shaky hands and traps them under warm and steady palms.

"Mara, look at me." Her hands are still trapped, so she's forced to look up with suspiciously damp lashes. He is regarding her with full-force farmboy sincerity, and she wants to tear away and flee as fast as the plastic up her ass will allow. Which probably isn't all that fast, but it's got to be better than sitting through this.

"I brought you here because I wanted to. Because I sat here yesterday with a lovely young woman, and all I could think about was you. How you'd laugh at the overpriced wine list. How you'd eat dessert like some explicit sexual act."

She wants to smile at his words but the knife in her gut won't stop twisting. None of this means anything.

"You needed a release."

Frustration or irritation flits across his face, then is smothered in Jedi calm.

"You think that's all you are to me, Mara?"

"I'm a student. Isn't that right? I wouldn't come to your precious academy so you got me another way. Whether I call you 'master' or not, you get to feel like you succeeded. This time with added benefits."

That frustration is back now, sharp and clear across his face. "No! It's nothing to do with-"

But he drops to silence at the waiter's approach. He orders drinks, politely requests a little longer to choose their food. She's lost her appetite completely.

"Take it out" he says suddenly, as the waiter retreats. His voice is sure, authoritative and firm.

"What?"

"Go to the bathroom and take it out. Sit with me here and let's eat dinner and talk. Tell me about work. Laugh at my backwater table manners. That's why I brought you here. The toy was just... " he spreads his hands "... a diversion perhaps. An honouring of our arrangement."

Mara frowns, confused. Is this a test of some sort?

"Stars Mara, of course it's not a test! Do you think so little of me, that this can't just be dinner?" and then pausing, watching her. "No... No, you think so little of _yourself_ , don't you?" His eyes hold a sadness she can't begin to abide.

"Fine." She drops her napkin and rises to her feet, mainly for the excuse to end this conversation. To get him out of her head. "Order me the ribenes" she says, casually, heels clipping loudly on the floor as she strides to the women's refreshers.

Inside, she sits on the seat of her stall and pulls her face through her hands. What in the galaxy is happening? Why can't she just play the game? Now he is pitying her, trying to make this into more than it was meant to be. She knows his intent was always different; the toy purchased in advance, his aim to watch her squirm at the table. His excitement in the speeder ride over had been palpable. She's ruined that now.

She's never had any desire for sympathy or headpats, least of all from Mr Perfect out there. It's an intolerable situation of her own creation, and she's left with two options from here: either to leave, or to claw them back to safer ground. Hating herself, she knows she'll do the latter. Knows it's the weaker choice, but that the pure white bliss of his administrations is already calling to her. She can't give it up just yet.

Standing, she smooths her dress and adjusts her underwear. The toy is snug inside of her and there it will stay; she will see through this evening's original intent and steer them surely back to Luke's true motivations. She was the Emporer's Hand - she doesn't stall over a few unplanned emotions. If he'd just hurry up and hurt her, they would be no issue at all.

Back at the table their drinks are waiting, along with a sunny Skywalker smile. She returns it with tight lips and sips at her wine. Tries to sit in a natural, unplugged sort of way.

"Everything ok?" he asks, one eyebrow quirked in insinuation & concern.

"Perfectly." she says, smoothing her napkin across her lap. "Though you were right about the wine list."

They slip into careful conversation, Luke doing most of the talking, Mara concentrating on looking attentive and calm. Occasionally the urge to grind the base of the toy against her seat sets in, and she leans back on a laugh to give herself a little teaser.

Luke doesn't notice until well into dessert, when he suddenly exclaims with volume.

"You didn't take it out!" His eyes are wide and bluer than Yavin skies, and she is struck by how naive he can be at times. People glance over in surprise.

She drops her voice. "What was I supposed to do with it? Drop it in my handbag? Besides," she offers him a devilish smirk - "I find i'm quite enjoying it."

A slow smile spreads across his face, but he tempers it with words. "I meant what I said about-"

"Shhh" she says, placing a finger to his lips. "My dessert is melting." She makes a show of eating it to match his earlier prediction - licking the spoon with long strokes of her tongue, catching a drip as it runs down her wrist. Grinding visibly against the chair. Her cheeks are flushed with wine and arousal, and she can tell Luke is struggling to fight with his own. Good. Then they're back with the program again.

Luke drops his credit chip and drains his glass. Takes her hand, gives it a small, surreptitious squeeze.

"Let's leave now," he says simply, and he pulls her to her feet and guides her back through the crowded room.

They find the speeder in its numbered underground bay, and she moves to climb into the passenger seat.

"Let me help you," he says, all misplaced chivalry - and upon turning to protest she finds he's very, very close. Too close. He puts his hands on her hips to still her, and closes the remaining distance. Flush against each other, she can feel his rapid heartbeat. Presumes that means he can feel hers, too. One hand snakes a little lower and she's waiting to feel him check for the toy, so it takes her by surprise when he brushes his lips on her mouth instead.

He pulls back to watch the shock dance through her features, and then leans into her again. He's more insistent this time, his tongue tracing the join of her lips, his hands bunching in the fabric of her dress. This is unquestionably a bad idea, but the softness and warmth is irresistible, and she finds herself returning his kiss. Opening her mouth, she slides her tongue against his, and he moans from deep in his throat. She feels him push her gently against the speeder, kissing her harder now, with no trace of restraint. One hand is in her hair and he is dipping her head for more intimate access, plunging deeper and hotter with every second. Stars, the man can kiss - but perhaps this shouldn't surprise her given his oral proclivities. She starts to feel a little dizzy, puts her arms around his neck for support. When they break away they are both panting slightly, and Mara can't meet his eye.

"Take me home please, Luke." She hopes she is smiling. "Take me home and fuck me."  
  
He growls in response and pulls her roughly against him, kisses her neck, teeth grazing by her ear. She is squirming with stimulation, aroused and unnerved in a toxic cocktail of need. She wants him to get the hell off of her. She wants him to never, ever stop.

He spins her around and pushes her over the bonnet of the speeder, hiking her dress up to her waist. Running his hands over the strip of bare thigh above her stockings, he moves up and lightly tugs her underwear down to below the curve of her buttocks. Her whole body trembles in anticipation of a strike. She's never needed anything so much.

"This looks so beautiful in you" he exhales, touching the visible base of the toy. "Shall we keep it in?"

She is silent for a beat.

"How about you replace it? With  _yourself.._." she murmurs in response, and she can *feel* his surprise at her words jolt in his mind. "I thought that could punishment, Sir" she adds, voice echoing deep off the metal of the bonnet. She's laying it on thick, she knows, but she needs this to happen, and it has to be soon. A big hit of violation  & pain to block out the tangled mess she's made of this night.

There is a moment's breathless silence, and then, slowly, confusingly, she feels him pull her underwear back up. 

"Some other time" he says softly, and she spins in disbelief to find he is stepping away, walking around to the driving side of his speeder. 

"What?" she states dumbly, and he's sliding into his seat, starting the engine.

"Get in the speeder, please."

His voice is commanding and she mutely complies, her brain and body still reeling from his sudden retreat. What has happened just now? What game is he playing with her?

A click or so in she notices something else is amiss.

"This is the wrong way," she says to Luke, "your apartment is West from here."

He looks over at her - hair mussed, cheeks flushed, dress still half-rucked and showing her stocking tops.

"I'm dropping you home..." he says, carefully, and her heart starts to thump like a trapped, startled mynock. He isn't teasing. He's really going to leave her like this.

"No. Take me home with you, please?" she can hear herself asking, and refuses to care about how stupid she must sound

"Not tonight, Mara" he responds simply, and then she doesn't know what else she can say.

He drives her home in silence, pulls up smoothly to her floor-level speeder bay. She climbs out without speaking, straightens her dress before closing the door.

"Mara", he calls, and she stops, hating the ridiculous hope that flares as she turns.

"If you want this to continue, keep that toy where it is. You can remove it for the refresher, but the rest of the time I expect you to wear it for me."

He pauses, watches her a moment, measures her response with his eyes.

"I'll send for you when I'm ready. If you're not wearing it, I'll consider our agreement terminated and won't call you again. The choice is - as always - completely your own."

He gives her a small, indecipherable smile, and then speeds away smoothly into the dark. 

She makes the short walk to her apartment, locks the door, sits on her bed without turning the light on. Baffled and burning, alone in the darkness, she is struck by a desire to put her head in her hands and weep.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to Frangipani & jadedskywalker for helping me untangle the mess I got into around this chapter. And to anyone who comments - I love reading your thoughts.


	6. Chapter 6

She hears nothing from him for days. Three days, to be precise; three days in which she debates constantly with herself about removing the plug. Three days full of peremptory trips to the bathroom, determined to throw it away, before she remembers his vow if she defies him on this. Twice she actually removes it and then hovers, uncertain what to do next. Winds up pushing it back in, awkward and flushed in the tight space of the cubicle.

She fully intends not to wear it for the duration. It's just that in each moment, one by one, she isn't prepared to discard it, and the moments stack up into hours, and then the hours into days. By the fourth day, she's even getting used to the thing.

Well, perhaps that's something of an exaggeration - it never sinks into background noise. She's dangerously aware of it all of the time - distracted, discomfited, and faintly aroused. Usually a heavy bout of denial like the restaurant debacle would leave her ramped up for hours, but the plug has kept her edging for days. She wakes in the night at the point of release and rakes her nails up her thighs just to dispel the tension. By morning her legs are striped with scarlet scratches and she can't pull her trousers up. Sleepless, relentless, restless, and raw. Another skirt day today, then.

At work she's a fire-breathing mess. Her mind constantly slips back to Skywalker; to him kissing her against the speeder, to him leaving her wanting and cold. She oscillates constantly between fury and longing, and twice is caught staring into space by the department PA. She responds by threatening him with a vibroknife, which is perhaps not entirely conducive to getting her flimsi copies on time, but makes her feel somewhat better in the moment.

Why the hells is she doing this?

Mara's a pragmatist; always prides herself on her often brutal introspection. For the first time in memory, she's struggling to make sense of her own mind.

She is not submissive. Every aspect of her nature demands that she rail against restrictions, so her compliance here with Skywalker does not come with grace. It is bribery in action - plain and simple - and she hates to acquiesce.

And yet, she is doing so. Because, for all the horrors of the restaurant debacle, he has provided more gratification in their few short encounters than she would usually find in a quarter. She is reluctant to throw that away - however unusual & uneasy his terms. There's something in this arrangement she needs more than she thought possible, & if she can just put her finger on it, then she'll know how to get more.

But for that, he must send for her, and for that she must wait. If she seeks him out, she's repeating the pushy behaviour that landed her into this mess. If she takes the plug out, she is making a choice for it to end. So she waits, stretched and filled and achingly needy, and continues to snap and relent by the minute.

It's day four when he finally comes to her. She's leaving an afternoon briefing - crowded palace hallway, arms full of datapads, head full of doubt. (Arse full of plastic, more's to the point). He appears out of nowhere, all quiet Jedi stealth, and swiftly guides her into an empty chamber. Lifts the ‘pads from her hands and sets them down. She finds she can't remember how she'd normally hold her arms. Flails them around a bit before settling for crossing them over her chest.

She's furious and resentful and.. perhaps a little excited.

"No hello?" he offers eventually, with a twitch of a smile.

"Hello Skywalker" she sighs, not without bitterness, and he moves a step closer.

"Well now, that isn't much of a welcome."

He's still almost-smiling, but there's a faint stab of fear in her gut. Is she messing this up? Four solid days of wearing that Sith-forsaken plug up her ass, & she's about to blow this with her pride.

She takes a breath, tries to swallow her anger. Succeeds to some basic extent.

"Tell me how I can welcome you more thoroughly, please, Sir".

He's smiling fully now and pulling her closer towards him. He slides a hand across her rear, briefly smooths it over the base of the plug through her skirt.

"You can 'welcome' me all you want, tonight. 8pm, my apartment. Don't be late."

He leaves a ghost of a kiss against her lips, then exits the room in a blink.

\---

At 7:58 she is at his door, trying to decide when to knock. It is an equation, all of this - she realises it now. At the restauraunt, she got it wrong, miscalculated. She's lost her edge after idling so long with the half-soaked marks at the bars. Skywalker needs more finesse if this is going to work. She's played trickier parts, knows she is up to the task. 

At 7:59 she raps gently against the door. It slides instantly aside, as if he knew she'd been waiting. Perfect mathematics.

"It's good to see you Mara" he is saying to her, and she slips off her coat & kneels before him in her simple white shift.

"Thank you for inviting me back" she says softly, keeping her gaze to the floor, eyes on his feet. They are bare on the soft beige carpet, his toes lightly shifting as he considers her pose.

His voice has a deeper timbre when he speaks again.

"You look wonderful down there. Is this part of my improved welcome..?" and he steps forward so that his toes are nearly touching her knees. She looks up, and is met with the hard bulge of his trousers in her face. Something close to a laugh bubbles up in her heart.

With calculated uncertainty, she lifts a hand to his pants and tugs them gently down. His underwear comes too and immediately his cock springs up before her - hard and heated, shiny and smooth. She can smell his skin and his soap and the scent of his sweat. Her pelvic muscles start to flex with desire.

She's always found male genitalia faintly ridiculous, but this is a thing of beauty. She reaches a hand up to grip him, then pauses mid air. 

"May I touch you, sir?" Oh, she's going to do it all right this time. She'll be his perfect little pet.

He nods, looking down at her, breathless.

She takes his length in her hand, slides it up and down in a tentative stroke.

"& may I kiss you here, too?"

She is trembling now, or perhaps it is him. Either way, when he nods again, she licks her lips and moves forwards to take the silky smooth tip of him into her mouth. She hears moans and for a second thinks they must be coming from her, as her knickers begin to grow damp between her legs. But no, it is Luke, still gazing down as she gently begins to draw him further into the heat of her mouth.

She moves her hands behind her back in a show of submission, opens her throat as best she can in case he really starts thrusting. But he seems content to let her control it for now - to give him long lazy licks, just enough suction to pull his pulse to the surface, an occasional graze of teeth to keep things interesting.

When he still doesn't thrust, she begins to move her head back and forth to take more of him in. He breathes deeply a moment then stills her, hands in her hair, and steps clean away. His cock is wet and shining and impossibly hard. She can't take her eyes off of it. 

"That's more like it," he tells her. "Now bend over that chair and let me look at you."

She rises silently and does as he says. Leans hard so her breasts press against the edge of the seat, her knees resting soft on the floor. Curves her butt up a little, displaying, teasing. The glossy black paddle on the sideboard has not escaped her notice.

He kneels quietly behind her, slips a hand to the hem of her skirt. Brushes his fingertips against the back of her thigh before lifting it, oh so lightly to her pool at her waist.

And then his hand freezes. His breathing stops. The atmosphere is so altogether altered that she can't help but turn to look at him, and he is regarding her lower half with an expression close to fury. When he speaks, it is almost a whisper.

"What the hell is this, Mara?"

Her heart is pounding uncomfortably, and she cannot fathom what is wrong. She's almost tempted to reach back and check on the butt plug, but she can feel that it is still inside of her, knows for certain it hasn't dislodged. Why is he angry with her?

Utterly confused, she follows his gaze and sees the scratches on her skin from the night. In the bright lights of his apartment, they look a little worse than she recalled. Still, it's hardly anything to get so worked up about.

She decides just to stick with the plan.

"I.. I'm sorry? You didn't say that I couldn't..."

"-I didn't SAY that you COULDN'T?!" He is all but shouting now, both hands raking through his hair. In all her careful calculations, she has not predicted this, and now she has no idea how to salvage the night. Why do the damn scratches matter so much to him? How has she ruined this already?

Four days. Four days of waiting and needing and wearing that stupid plug, and she has ruined it in the space of five sithspawned minutes. Why did she think she could be enough for this man? Why isn't she under some brute from a bar?

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done it. My body is yours and I... now I've spoiled it for you, and.." she's almost glad to feel the tears prick her eyes. They're exactly what she'd have chosen, were she still in control.

"No Mara. No." He tugs her to face him, takes her face in his hands. "No, that isn't it at all."

He lets go of her, sadly, stands to pace a little, hands rubbing his face. She slips back to rest on her bottom, elbows on the chair, and watches him soberly, unsure what to do. Finally, he turns back to her, with more words from the blue.

"Did you masturbate?"

Eyes wide, Mara shakes her head, appalled. "Of course not!" she breathes, glad to have the right answer for once.

Yet even this seems to backfire, as he casts his gaze to the ceiling and draws in a breath. For all the galaxy, she could swear he's exasperated with her, but nothing is making sense.

Finally he says, "Then you'll do it for me now," and taking her roughly by the hand, pulls her into the bedroom, pushes her onto the bed.

 

"Do you need a vibe?" he is asking her, but her head is still spinning, trying to figure him out. This is so far out of her equations that it's a different subject altogether - she walked into math class and it’s third century Rodian history in here. She doesn't know any of the answers - can barely parse the questions at all.

"A dildo?" he is asking now, opening his wardrobe, digging around in the bags at the bottom.

"No I... I can just.. but I don't..."

He shuts the closet with a bang, moves to sit at the end of the bed. 

"Underwear off, legs as wide as you can. We're not moving until I see you orgasm, so make it good for me, please."


	7. Chapter 7

"No.

It slips out before she's even had chance to think it through. Which might be just as well, as it happens.

"Excuse me?" His eyes are narrowed, but he isn't dangerous, and there’s a certain type of comfort in that.

"No. I don't want to."

"You don't get a choice in the matter."

Which is precisely the wrong thing to say.

"There's the safe word," she reminds him, and he tilts his head at this.

"There is," he concedes, "and you're not using it."

She blinks. He's got her there. Hyperdrive. If she wants this to stop then she just needs to say it. Hyperdrive.

She returns his gaze with a silent glower.

"I can't do it like this. I can't.. without the other stuff."

Gods, she can't even say the words to him.

"Can't, or won't?"

"I can't. You said if I did as you asked then I'd get what I need, but that isn't what's happening. I need the.. Need you to hurt me. If you want me to. To orgasm."

There. She can say it. Fine.

"Since when?"

She shrugs. Since forever. What does it matter?

"Well then. It's high time you learned."

Mara expects to get precisely nowhere. She is abjectly not in the mood for this, her head still spinning from the past fifteen minutes. Plus she's more than rusty when it comes to masturbation. Sexual pleasure hasn't been on her agenda in years.

Truth be told, it's never really been a priority. Still, the way he says it leaves little room for argument, and she needs to buy some time. There's a solution here somewhere. She just needs a minute to think.

So she hesitantly drops a hand between her splayed legs and opens herself to him. Her folds are still slick from the rush of having his dick in her mouth, so she smoothes that around and tries to make a good show of it. Wonders if he could tell if she's faking it via the Force. 

Has anyone ever seen her like this before - splayed open, brightly lit, completely on show? She can feel herself flushing under his gaze.

Then there's the goddamn plug up her ass, not to mention the four days of desperate edging. By the time she's brushing her clit with two slick-dampened fingers, she can already feel herself coming around to the whole idea. Maybe this won't be so hard after all.

She drops her other hand and slips a finger inside herself experimentally. It feels good, but superficial, so she adds in another, shifting slightly to reach. Her heartrate is skipping along, her breath a little bit disordered.

"Legs wider," he hisses. He tugs her legs straight, ankles wide, so that she's more open than ever.

There's something about this vulnerability, being so totally exposed that feels impossibly good, and when she feels herself starting to run with excitement, her moan is made of both arousal and shame.

"My. Someone's getting excited." He says, dipping a hand to brush against her drooling sex. He raises his fingers to her mouth; paints her juices on like lip gloss. "You like this," he observes with a smile in his eyes. "You like me watching you lose control."

Which may well be true, except she can't - not quite. The monitor of her mind is still churning away, offering a running commentary on all that transpires. /you've made a mess of the bed/he can see all of your cunt/you've got your back to the exit/you sound so ugly when you come/.

It's distracting enough that she can't quite build to orgasm, and as the minutes tick by she's increasingly sure that she won't. Frustration mixed with humiliation only makes an end more elusive, and after what must be 30 minutes she pulls her hands away and snaps her knees back together in sudden anger.

"I can't do it."

"Yes, you can," he says gently, and guides her hand back between her legs. "Go slowly. Let me help."

With a gentle hand, he picks up her wrist and moves it between her legs. Strokes her own fingers against herself with feather light touches.

"Legs wider,” he whispers, and she silently complies. "Now open yourself up."

She slips her fingers into her labia and unfurls herself like a flower. He watches greedily; like he hasn't eaten in weeks and she's serving up a batha steak for him. With all the trimmings.

"Now, softly, like this." Takes her hand again, shows her the places. "Slowly, my pet."

She has never really done this. Never wasted time getting to know her own genitals; they do their job, she’s always had bigger things to worry about.  
But under his tutelage they discover the places that make her squirm. The tip of her clitoris when she slips the hood back that makes her jolt with delicious electricity. The spot deep inside of her that makes her clench, then gush.

And the whole time he is watching, guiding, letting her discover herself. He's a great teacher, she ruefully concedes to herself. He's probably great at the Academy.

"We don't teach this there," he says, without taking his eyes off her crotch. "Although for you I might make an exception."

/Out of my head/, she thinks loudly, and he smirks. Stills her hand a little when she starts to try and rush things.

"You're getting close," he breathes, entranced. "Push your tits out for me. Show me this beautiful body that's all for me."

So she arches her back.  
He leans forward and snags both nipples between his fingers, begins to twist and tug. It's not enough to be painful but it sends bolts of electricity straight to the centre of her snatch and she's beginning to writhe under her own fingers. He tugs so that her hard little teats stretch away from her body and suddenly a long stream of fluid gushes out of her pussy. Oh god. 

She feels a hot rush of humiliation, but Luke smiles at her, entranced.

"There now. I'll have to smack you scarlet for squirting all over my sheets like that. Do it again and you won't be able to sit for a week."

Involuntarily, his words send a hot shot of desire straight to her core. Her sex clenches, and another splash of excitement escapes her.

He chuckles,dips his fingers into her mess. Lifts and tastes them.

"Sith, you're beautiful," he murmurs, and then he is touching and squeezing her with two warm, eager hands - tugging her nipples, kneading the soft flesh of her breasts. She's feeling soft and fuzzy and strangely at ease.  
She's making animal noises, her pussy so wet she can hear it now, but her face feels numb and it's all oddly distant, like she's drank too much wine.

She arches herself further back, forces her legs wide, adds a third finger into her wet, hungry cunt. And just like that she is coming - shouting, wailing, crying his name. She is coming and coming while he watches her raptly - watches her pussy spasm open and closed, watches her eyes roll back into white. Watches her lose all control and not give the remotest fuck in that tiny, blissful moment.

She comes down with a rush of endorphins and finds he's pulling her hand up and out from her snatch.

"Now, clean yourself up, my beautiful girl," he says liltingly, and brings her damp fingers close to her mouth. She opens her lips and he pushes them in, watching her suck off the remnants of her pleasure. His breathing is shallow, his arousal hot and prominent through his pants.

"I meant what I said to you Mara - I want you craving that taste. If you need a release away from me, then do this to yourself. I'm in control of your pain now, and no one else gets to hurt you, including yourself. Is that understood?"

Truthfully, she barely hears him. Her heartbeat is still singing in her ears, her blood still rushing through her veins. But yes, she agrees to that, doesn't she? Who even cares?

She gives vague sort of nod.

“Ok then, bend over. But move down a little - I want your face in your cum while we do this.”

So she wriggles down the bed, presses her face to the warm, wet sheets. They smell sweet and musky and unmistakably of sex. It's all she can taste and smell and breathe as he smoothes his hands over her bottom.

“How many do you think you deserve today?”

She's finding it hard to think of a number. She'll be grateful for anything at all. She’s so desperately ready for this.

"Ok, let's say 20, for saying no to me before. Another 10 for that mess on your beautiful thighs, I think. Does that sound fair?"

Sith, 30. She's not sure she can take that many.  
She’s not sure it’s enough.

"Yes sir. Thank you."

"You can count for me. You ready?"

He doesn't wait for her to say yes.

He uses his right hand; the artificial one. It's harder for him to gauge just how much force he is using, but he knows she'd think it a half measure if he went with the left. He alternates between each cheek of her bum, heating her skin up to a soft rosy hue while she pants and hisses out each number.

"26, 27.."

"Is this what you wanted?"

Gasping for air. Still pushing up for more.

"Yes. Thank you Luke. So much."

"Tell me why I am spanking you."

"Because I deserve it. Because I'm a nasty, worthless bitch and I deserve to be hurt."

There's a fragment of a pause, Luke's hand stalling mid air. Then he swallows and continues the slap. Hears her count out the next number.

He has to work not to soften his blows as his mind processes what he just heard. It feels like the words are suffocating inside his lungs. He'd heard subs talk this way before, in his days frequenting the Coruscant Club scene. Why is this any more shocking?

"36... Thank you for giving me more than you promised."

He comes to and realises he's overshot. Her ass is livid and glowing before him and suddenly there's no thrill at all in any of this. He wants to wrap her in his arms and tell her she's better than this. Wants to explain that he isn't like everyone else.

He shakes the notion away.

She's still face down on the duvet, panting, so he rises and retrieves a container from his dresser. She jolts as he smooths the cold fluid inside into her heated backside.

"Luke?" She asks hesitant, and he shushes her. 

"It's just a bacta gel. I was a little over zealous."

She should protest, she supposes, but the racing of her heart is white noise in her ears, and her body feels full of light. She closes her eyes against the backs of her arms and lets the peace seep into her bones, while he gently applies the balm.

When she comes to, she finds she's laying on her side, a blanket draped over her back.

Wrapping it around herself, she rises and pads into the living room, tracing his presence in the Force. She finds him reclining on the sofa, scrolling a data pad. There’s a bottle of red open on the table.

"Refreshers through there, if you'd like. I put out fresh towels and some clothing." He turns and gives her that sunny Skywalker beam that makes her stomach lurch, makes her chest start to ache.

"I... I should probably go."

He sets his glass down. "Stay for dinner with me. I ordered enough Corellian food to feed a Wookie, and I can't eat it alone."

She opens her mouth to decline but he adds, "I'd have asked first, but you went and fell asleep on me."

She flushes. "I'm sorry about that. You should've woken me. We didn't get to..."

He waves a hand. "Stay for dinner and all is forgiven. Food will be 15 minutes. Refresher's the door on the left."

And because she's hungry, because she's sleep dazed, or perhaps because he said he was going to fuck her and it still hasn't happened yet - she finds herself complying. 

"Oh and Mara?”

She turns.

"You can the plug on the countertop. I think you've earned a little respite tonight."

The clothes he has put out for her are not her own.

There's a too-big tunic in black - no prizes for guessing whose that is, then - but the underwear is definitely female. It could just as well be his sister's, but she feels a strange sort of prickliness about wearing them, all the same. Decides to forgo it and keep herself bare underneath - her butt's too sore to handle it anyway.

When she emerges from the refresher in a haze of steam, he's setting out the food by the sofa. 

Of all the scenes they've played out together to date, this is by far the most awkward. They are not friendly on this level; this is intimate in all the wrong sorts of ways.

Still, the food smells good, and it's an arbitrary distinction, truth be told. If he can watch her pussy squirt, she can share a box of noodles with him. 

They eat from the containers sprawled on opposite ends of the sofa. Skywalker plies her with a glass of rouge wine, and she drinks it gratefully, ready to dial down her mind. She’s so tired of thinking about thinking. 

He's good company tonight, she can ruefully admit. Animated and funny, with a darker sense of humour than she'd have credited him for. He’s making her laugh.

He talks about the menu, and his brother in law's cooking. She shares a story about a terrible night on Corellia, where she ended up hiding in a garbage bin for three solid hours, and he returns with an anecdote about a trash compactor on the Death Star. She says he's never allowed to touch her again with those filthy garbage-grabbing hands.  
He laughs and his eyes crinkle.

She asks about Tessara in a teasing tone, but he shuts it down, steers them onto the Academy instead. He insists that she's wasting her potential and should reconsider a trip to Yavin. She tells him he has a death wish and that there are seventeen different ways she could kill him without getting off the sofa. 

He laughs again, and it feels a little like winter sun. "I can think of worse ways to go”, he says.

He leans forward and kisses her. It is different to their first kiss - softer, more tentative, more intimate somehow. She doesn't kiss him back, until he pulls away and whispers her name on her lips, and then she can't help but fall into the moment with him.

He pulls away and looks at her, his shields a little tighter than usual, giving nothing away. She tightens her own reflexively, tries to guess where he's going with this. He brushes her hair away from her forehead and then says simply, "more wine?” 

She's finding he's full of surprises.

By midnight the bottle is empty and a drowsiness has descended. The blanket from earlier covers Mara's outstretched legs; when Luke's feet grow cold, he burrows them under the other side. It's late, and it's been a long week. She figures there'll be no more action tonight.

He drops his head against the back of the sofa, the room dense with the ambience of sleep.

"Stay the night with me, Mara Jade," he says merrily, lazily, tipsily.

It’s possible her heart has stopped

She can see it so clearly. The warmth of his arms against her cold skin in the night. Sex that starts slow and lazy as the rising sun streams in. His polite morning entreaties to leave before his sister shows up.

She can see it all. 

She shakes her head at him, trying to put words to the sudden feelings that are clawing in her chest. Panic. Rage. Hysteria.  
Nothing comes out.

He moves closer, puts a warm hand on her naked knee. 

"Mara..." he is saying to her. She can tell from the way he looks to her mouth that he’s thinking about kissing her again.

Suddenly it's all too much. The burning in her backside, the ache in her chest. The hunger that keeps thrumming inside of her, no matter how much she concedes. The overwhelming hell of being seen and considered and recalled, even after she’s gone.

The way he is looking at her like she is more than she is.

His face is closer now, his eyes studying hers, trying to read her expression.

"What is it Mara?" he asks softly, and she's frozen in time, unable to move. Unable to do anything except close her eyes, suck in a breath and say: 

"Hyperdrive. Hyperdrive-hyperdrive-hyperdrive."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are my life blood. Just sayin. x


	8. Chapter 8

“Hey Mara. It’s me. I'm... I’m not planning on bothering you or anything, so you don’t need to worry. I’m respecting your boundaries. I just wanted to let you know… If you need to talk, you know where I am. I hope you're ok. If you change your mind... decide you want to try and push some of those boundaries… well, you know where I am. I’ll see you around. “

No. No way. Not a chance in hell.

He only comms that one time. True to his word, he doesn’t bother her again - she half expects to see him lingering in the corridor outside her office someday, but he never shows up.  If only she’d known about this magical safeword a decade ago.

That’s not to say he leaves her alone, though.  Because while physically he keeps a mindful distance, mentally he is continually present. His Force sense is like the faint line to a song that she can’t quite stop singing; the heady aftertaste of a really great bottle of wine. He lingers in the fringes of her consciousness all day long, and it’s lousy for her mood, her heart and her focus at work. 

Every time she picks up a data pad. Every time she takes a run at the gym. No matter how densely she packs her time with training and working and drinking, her mind persists in slipping into lust-drunken wanderings. Every time she has time to think, she thinks of him.  
Not of him, she chides herself.  Just of the things that he did.

There’s a strange sort of nostalgia colouring her days now, an uneasy longing for the time after Palpatine’s death. Cut loose and alone in the galaxy, she was left to fight for her life - figuratively, mainly, but on occasion quite literally too. With no money or identity to carry her through, she came to fully appreciate her gifts in life; the advantage that a pretty face, a fast mind and a strong chokehold can bring.  
The funny thing about fighting to survive is that you’ve nothing left to waste on want. It was in no way rosy, but it was simple, and it was clean.  She finds she misses that focus, the clarity of mind. She’s altogether more suited to being a tool than a woman.

—

He draws her underwear down her legs, tugs her shoes off her feet. Her dress, he leaves as is; tugs her gently by the hand towards the bedroom.

They sit, she cross-legged, and he pushes her knees apart with calluses palms. Rucks her dress up just so, giving him a clear view of her rapidly ramping arousal. Her cheeks are flushing gently, her hair ever so slightly mussed. He site back and regards her, says "you're really so very beautiful."

She drops her eyes, presses her mouth into a line. Gives half a shake of her head - and then he is on her, one hand in her hair, one at her shoulder. His face very close, his grip just the right side of painful.

"Come now. I thought we had an agreement about my compliments."

She can't help half a smile, at his teasing words, at the way his hand is tugging her hair at the root. His left hand slips the strap of her dress down over her shoulder, then crosses to do the same on the right. He tugs it down to expose her breasts, keeping her held tipped backwards with a firm grip against her scalp. 

"You are beautiful." He trails his fingertips across her nipple, and she suppresses a shiver.  
"You are special and rare. A thing to be treasured." Those fingers on the other breast now, just grazing, softly circling.

But these words are too much, and she can't help the reflexative way her head tries to shake.  
It tugs her hair against his grip, and so of course he will notice.

He drops both hands to her breasts, thumbs firm on her nipples. suddenly he is pinching, hard, and she finds herself caught in his sharp blue eye contact as her brain reels to process the sensation.

"Tell me you're beautiful."

She hesitates. He is tugging at her now, a sensation deliciously painful, and she can't help how her head tips back a little, how she arches her chest into his touch. 

"Say it for me".

What if she doesn't? That sounds like a win win from where she's sitting, so she shuts her eyes defiantly and is rewarded when he tugs both nipples firmly towards him. they are stretching away from her body in a way that is new and painfully erotic. She feels her pussy start to leak onto the bed.

"Mara..."

There's a note of warning, and it's something she's keen to explore, so she matches his gaze with defiance. 

In one swift movement he releases her distended teats and lands a sharp slap to her right breast with the palm of his hand.  
Before the shock has time to register he is dealing the same to the other, then back again - hot red handsprints against the creamy expanse of her chest.  
She's heaving for breath when he reaches 5 smacks on each breast, takes hold of her nipples again, firmly, sharply.

"Say it, Mara."

She smiles slowly and shakes her head.  
He growls low in his throat, pushes her roughly back against the pillows.

From that bag in the wardrobe he brings out clamps each trailing a length of scarlet ribbon. They bite sharply into her sensitised flesh, then he is pulling her legs up so that her knees rest above them. The ribbons are tied in the bend of each leg, so that when she gingerly moves one, the clamp tightens and stretches, and she gives a whimper of pain.  
Legs up and akimbo, her naked sex and ass are fully on show, and for a moment she can feel him just looking at her.

Then he is stroking lightly between her legs.

"So very beautiful" he hums approvingly, then retrieves his holo tablet from the bedside, activates the camera.

"No..." she whimpers, but knows it isn't worth the safe word - knows even as she begs him not to that she wants to be recorded like this. Tits tied to her knees, legs splayed open. Humiliated and taken. 

He holds the screen in front of her face so she can see herself in the pictures.

"Beautiful." he says.

—

She sees him in the palace, once. She’s been shielding intensely after a difficult night, so she’s not entirely cognicent of his proximity at first.  She’s learning to tune out his hum in the back of her mind; to ignore it like one does with chronic pain.  
Then she turns the corner and he is unmissable; a radiant burst of bright sunlight that makes her stop and psychologically squint.  His Force sense feels nuclear after six weeks of abstinence. It’s like her body has burst into song.

She spins on her heel and stalks away, though she knows he has seen her too. Knows from the cast of his eyes that is burned against her retina; from the shaken & chagrinned look that flits over his face. The tinkling laughter that still rings in her ears as she recalls the way that woman, Tessara, had been leaning in, laying her hand against his arm.

She tenders her resignation that night.


	9. Chapter 9

It's been three days since he saw her last. Almost seven weeks since she walked out of his apartment with a Force sense buzzing like a hornets nest, and he’s heard nothing from her since.

He hasn't contacted her. That feels like a violation - like it would contravene all that he’d promised her when they first set this up. She used this chance to get away from him, and so he has to give her that - however reluctant he feels.

He picks up on her Force sense now and again. She's practiced at shielding, but it sometimes slips - usually at times of high emotion. Usually at times he'd rather not know about.

He's heard on the grapevine that she's trawling the lower level cantinas in the evenings, drinking with the type of men who make rancours look gentile. He gets occasional flashes of pain or emotion and has to lock his jaw and remember she is choosing this.

  
He offered her something different and it wasn't enough.

He's had a lot of time to consider it all. What happened that night, where it first went wrong. He's never 'broken in' a sub, as they say at the clubs - the women he spent time with there had all belonged to other masters. That he chose Mara Jade of all people to practice on is a joke he wishes he could share. But nobody in his real world knows about his sex life, and no one at the club knows Mara Jade.

  
The one person who would appreciate the irony isn’t interested to hear.

He saw her this week, in a hallway at the palace. He’d known she was close and figured he’d trust in the Force; if it threw them in one another’s path, then perhaps that was a sign. There’s a sickening sort of anticipation as he senses her approach, but he sticks to his route and tries to just let it be.

She looks… fine. A little tired, perhaps, but still her indomitable self. She’s wearing an expression of guarded surprise. The hallway is busy and his view of her keeps flashing between other beings’ heads. When he next sees her, she’s looking directly at him through the crowd.

And then he’s interrupted, and as he turns to address the speaker, he’s hit by a vast wave of emotion. It’s so heady he almost sways on his feet, and by the time he manages to clear his senses enough to process a thought, he’s woven in by concerned crowd, people are asking if everything is ok.

  
And Mara, of course, has beat a hasty retreat.

—

Three nights after this day he wakes in a panic. His heartrate and breathing are elevated; his Force sense singing of danger. It takes a moment or two to gather himself enough to realise it is Mara again.

He rises to make hot chocolate, knowing he won't manage to sleep until the danger has passed for her. Without being able to intervene, the Force sense is just a useless futility.

So it takes him by surprise when he senses her near. She doesn't usually bring the men back to her apartment; he figures she likes to keep her identity hidden. But her pain is registering high and close, and before he knows it he's on his feet and walking out of his door, in bare feet and sleeping pants.

She doesn't answer when he knocks at her apartment, so he lets himself in. Calls her softly in the Force, and then verbally, but he doesn't get an answer.

Whilst checking the bedroom he hears the water running, and steps into the refresher.

She is sitting on the floor of the cubicle, shower running, in a sea of pink. Tugging open the door he sees an open head wound that is flowing fresh and free in the water's flow. She is crying in heavy, silent sobs.

He finds a towel and gently lifts her. Carries her to the sofa, where he tends to her head. A warm palm and a little healing stem the blood flow; soft fingertips against her temples quiet the pain.

She rests against his chest and stares into nothingness. Her Force sense feels like a yawning chasm of emptiness, and he’s not quite sure how she’s doing it. When the towel starts to cool she grows shivery, so he fetches a blanket, some tea, her medical kit.

They don't speak as he gently finishes dressing her wound, but once he’s resealed the med kit, she climbs back into his embrace and he pulls the blanket over them both. In the wee small hours of the Coruscant morning, they both fall asleep, his arm holding tight around her waist.

\--

“Good morning,” he says into her hair, feeling her stirring to wakefulness. The blinds are fully open, the room flooded with early morning sunlight. Her hair is still damp at the back, and smells like the forest floor after the rain.

  
Mara ducks her head, seemingly unable to find an answer. Perhaps she’s embarrassed about him helping last night. Perhaps this is the ‘morning after’ she’d so wanted to avoid.

  
“How are you feeling?”

  
She is quiet, unmoving, and then,

“I’m leaving Coruscant, Luke.” Her tone is level and quiet. “I finish at the Alliance in four weeks time.”

Right up until that moment he’d thought he was fine. However potent the cocktail of chemistry and shared experience, of friendship and Force sense… he thought he could just let go. Let it be, and then not be, with no great sense of loss.

  
Now he’s finding the opposite. Whatever she’s running from, it’s not just friendship and fucking. Is she feeling this too? This sense of something fragile, poised to break open.

He takes a moment to steady his breath. Tries to think like Mara, tries to figure what to say. He has her notice period; it doesn’t have to be right now. Four weeks, she had said? Four weeks until she leaves here for good.

And so he slides his hand down her arm, ignores the delicate fingertip bruising there.

“You’re mine until then, Mara Jade. I’m not quite done with you yet.”

He figures he’s chosen as good a path as any when she tenses and sighs, but offers no argument.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no smut! Have I lost you? You've gone quiet, commenters.
> 
> If it helps, there's a really dirty scene already written for an upcoming chapter... 


	10. Chapter 10

"What the kriff is this place, Skywalker?”

 

Three standard days later, and they are standing outside in the dark. He'd asked her to come early tonight, then hurried her through his door when she arrived. 

 

“I’m taking you out,” he’d said, all poorly-contained excitement and glittering eyes. “There’s something for you to wear on the bed.”

 

Mara’s opposed to this, in principle; men should not try to dress or alter their lovers. Not least because they tend to have appalling taste, expecting their women to dress like holoflick prostitutes or Twi'lek dancing girls. Still, she’s intrigued enough to stick her head around the door, and the sight of an expensive-looking white lingerie box does the rest of the work. 

 

She tugs at the pink satin ribbon and it slithers open. Inside is a set of shimmersilk underwear that must have cost half her month’s rent. They’re black, extremely skimpy, and what there is by way of coverage is entirely sheer. There's an abundance of straps crossing in ingenious places. 

 

All in all, he’s made a pretty good choice.   
“Do you like it?” She startles at his voice, close behind. Smiles over a shoulder and says, 

 

“Pretty good, for a farm boy."

 

He grins, and says “put them on. I’ll be waiting by the door - we need to leave in a couple of minutes.”

 

She hurriedly tugs on the knickers, fastens the bra. There’s nothing by way of support, but that isn’t the point of such garments. Pulling her dress back over her head, she steps into her shoes and meets him back in the hall.

 

He raises an eyebrow as he passes her coat, but says nothing more.

 

A twenty minute speeder ride later, she is standing here. Before them rises an old stone building, in the darkness of the layers of the city. There’s a cluster of speeder bikes and vehicles outside; red flashing lights dance in the windows, and the street echoes with distant thumping bass. Mara turns to Luke askance.

 

He beams, ever the teacher. “Reach out - what are you getting?" 

 

She crinkles her brow in concentration - or perhaps consternation. 

 

"I can't make it out. Beings, lots of them. And it's almost like... suffering. But,” she pauses, baffled. “Happier?"

 

Huh. She's getting good at this. Better head in before she has any more time to think.

 

He guides her up the steps with a hand on the small of her back, skirting provocatively low onto her bottom. She gives him a small, shy sort of smile. 

 

At the end of the hall is heavy blank door. It shakes with the muted bass from within, and a holocam swivels to assess both their faces.

"Take your dress off,” he says suddenly.

 

"What? No!"

 

"Quickly!" he tells her, slipping her coat from her shoulders, and then a mask from within his own cloak. He fastens it over his eyes - black and theatrical, it covers half of his face and renders him strangely inexpressive.

 

"And then get on your knees."

 

From behind the door there's the sound of latches being drawn, metal bolts sliding across. Mara, still wearing her dress, drops to her knees and waits, calculating what this all is. She's not entirely sure where he’s brought her, but she can hazard a guess.

 

As the door heaves open she feels something almost like fear. It eases a little when a broad stocky man, with a remarkable amount of body hair and a tiny leather thong steps through the door.

 

"Revan!" he greets Luke, in surprisingly familiar tones, stepping forward to throw an arm around him, patting him hard on the back. "We'd just about given up on ever seeing you again. And my, who's this pretty lil thing!” He leers towards Mara, and she is thinking of all the ways she can educate him on how she is neither when Luke cuts her off, sharply.

 

"This is my sub. She's in training, right now."

He booms out a laugh. "You sly dog - now it all makes sense. She’ll need to take the dress off, though.”

 

Both men regard Mara where she sits on the floor.

/See/ she hears Luke in her mind. /I told you so./

They’ve hit a different note together, since that night. It’s like a great many things shifted, in those quiet, dusky hours. 

 

For Mara’s part, she feels certain that the question of romance has been firmly laid to rest. Luke had clearly known of her nighttime activities, and made no attempt to object. She’d even slipped him a sense of what she was up to, now and then, as a test to them both, and his implacable tolerance showed his disinterest in spades. 

 

Thankfully, in doing so she had also effectively illustrated that she was harbouring no such daydreams about the two of them either, which should put a neat end to any sympathetic overtures Skywalker had felt indebted to make. Really, it’s a very tidy resolution to that whole particular mess.

 

What she hadn’t quite counted on was the increased informality that had sprung up. Where before they’d both suspended disbelief and willingly taken on new roles in their time spent together, now there’s a trace of their usual selves. She throws him a little sass, now and then, and he takes it with a smile. Encourages it, even within the context of whatever these roles they are playing. Which, given her proclivity for punishment, is no bad thing for either of them. 

 

So when he speaks into her mind in that moment, she’s tempted to retort. It’s only the eyes of the doorman that make her hesitate - he’s watching them, and there’s an open curiosity on his face. To defy Luke on this point would be making a statement.

So, cheeks flaming in frustration, she tugs her dress up over her head. The lingerie is even more revealing than she recalled. Luke’s pupils visibly flare behind the mask, and the doorman’s face slips into a knowing leer.

 

"Well, now, head on in,” he says to Luke, all insinuation and smirk. "I’m sure you’ve got lots to catch up on, after so long away..." And clapping Luke on the back again, laughing at volume, he shepherds them both through the door.

  
  


Luke’s palm in one hand, she clutches her dress with the other, tries to cover her nudity in part. It’s a thought that becomes redundant as her eyes adjust to the darkness inside and she sees just how much flesh is on show in this place.

 

Luke is tugging her along through the club and she's galloping behind him in heels. To her left she sees a male Twi'lek suspended by his lekku under dark blue lights. Behind a gauzy curtain there's a mass of writhing bodies that are hard to make out into species. In a cage above the dance floor, two men are fellating each other.

 

And all the time the music thrums with a deep, oppressive beat.

 

Finally Luke pulls her into a booth and tugs the curtain across. It's still sheer - a dark burgundy chiffon - but the walls afford a little protection from the music, and she can at least hear him speak again.

 

"What the hell is this place, Luke? They  _ know _ you here?” It does nothing to soothe her rage when he smiles simply, and shrugs.

 

“Consider it a field trip, of sorts. Now, toss your dress over there and let me get a proper look at you."

 

She should refuse, of course - should shove her heel to his groin and walk straight on out. Instead she drops her dress to the bench and spreads her arms with a roll of her eyes.

 

"Same old scarred body you've seen before, Skywalker. Not even shimmersilk can make up for that."

He steps fluidly against her and pushes her into the wall.

 

"What have I said about insulting yourself?” His tone is feral and low, his thigh ghosting its pressure between her legs.

“If you’re fishing for punishment, we're in exactly the right place."

 

And then he is off, her body cold in the sudden air, and he takes her again by the hand and leads her out into the club.

As they weave through the throngs of beings, he leans close to murmur into her ear.

 

"A little advice.” She has to strain to hear, uses the force to augment it a little.

 

“Do as you’re told or you'll be punished, severely. Kneel by my side whenever we stop. Hands behind your back, push your tits up and out. Don't look any of the Doms in the eye; don't speak unless you're asked to, to anyone. And don't sass me - not when people can hear." He gives her a look that is both playful and stern.

“Oh, and nobody gets to touch you. Let me know if they try, and I'll rip off their hand."

 

Mara blinks. Presumably that's a joke.

 

"So. Want to pick a room, or should I?"

 

To the side, Mara sees a woman tied flat to a board being whipped by a crowd.

 

"I... wouldn't know where to start..." she admits, a little dazed.

 

"Fine. I've got something in mind, as it happens.”    
He steers her up a flight of metal stairs to a balcony above. Heads to a back corner, where a crowd of people have gathered.

 

In the centre there's a woman - young, blonde, beautifully shaped. She is naked, her legs clamped to a long spreader bar, and her hands behind her back are chained to the roof. There’s a dense black hood covering her face and the top of her head.

 

Mara kneels as instructed; rubs her arms to dispel the prickles that rise.

Behind the blonde, a man is brandishing a soft leather whip. He is idly flicking it against her skin while she flinches and flails, though it looks gentle enough.

 

"Revan! Long time no see!” The man with the whip acknowledges their arrival, and steps away from the girl by a pace.

 

Behind his mask Luke nods in acknowledgement, as the stranger takes in Mara's form   
“Well, and now I understand why. Finally got yourself a slavegirl, I see?  And what a beauty she is, too..."

 

He reaches out half a hand to her hair, but Luke subtly steps in his way.

 

“She’s new. I’m still breaking her in.” The man nods, unaffronted.

 

"Got a few new sluts here myself with me tonight. Perhaps you'd like to have a try? Let this little one see what she's in for?"

 

Luke casts a glance down at Mara, an odd look on his face.

 

"What do you think, Mara? Would you like to watch me with another woman?"

 

No. Absolutely not. That much is clear from the sudden fire that launches inside of Mara's chest, but she forces it down, tries to shield it from view.

 

Of course he notices.   
  
"Oh, you don't like that idea _ at all _ , do you?" he smiles, eyes flashing provocatively. "Don't you like to share? Are you greedy for my attentions to stay all for yourself?"

 

Mara opens her mouth to retort, then closes it again. She looks to the blonde girl in chains. Imagines watching Luke touch her, whip her, fuck her.

Is struck by the urge to get up and run.    
  
"Come then, let's play a small game.”

 

He leads her closer to the hooded girl, stroking a hand over her naked back.

 

"I can touch her, or you can do it. You get to choose which you'd prefer. Whichever makes you feel more comfortable, tonight, seeing as you’re new."

 

Mara's cheeks flare, but she never balks from a challenge. He knows this too well. Knows  _ her  _ far too well.

 

"Stroke her ass,” he says, folding his arms to his chest. 

 

Mara stares at him mutely and shakes her head.

Shrugging, Luke slides his hand lower and behind to squeeze and massage the girls scarlet cheeks. Mara's feels her face rush to a similar shade. She swallows.

 

"Ok. Ok,” said softly, but she knows he can hear. "I'll do it." She steps forward and places her hands above his. Nudges him subtly out of the way.

 

"That's better," he smiles. “Now suck on her tits.”

 

Mara's anger flares clear in her eyes.

/do what?/ she barks mentally, and he laughs into her mind.

 

/or watch me do it instead. The choice is yours, Mara Jade./

 

Hesitantly, blushingly, Mara moves to kneel in front of the girl. Luke's eyes are glued to her face, his breathing a note heavier.

 

He gives an instructive nod, and she leans forward and puts a hand on the girl’s small, soft breast.  This is ridiculous, she thinks. Slowly, haltingly, she leans forward and takes the nipple into her mouth. The sight of her red mouth against the girl's pale flesh is flagrantly erotic, and several men in the crowd begin to murmur and groan. Luke's flare of arousal is visceral through the Force.

 

"Touch her pussy while you do that," he commands, and several in the crowd stop to call out encouragement. Mara's face is flaming with shame, her body hot and prickling all over. She’s never touched a woman like this in her life. Barely even touched herself, come to that. Still, the girl is writhing and whimpering in what is presumably pleasure.

 

She slips a tentative hand between the girl’s parted legs and gives a few gentle strokes. Her mouth moves to the other breast before her, sucks in the tip.

Luke is watching with an open-mouthed, feral expression.

 

"Now kiss her down there. Kiss her pussy for me.”

 

/No./

 

Her response is like a reflex it sparks out of her so fast. 

 

/No. I don't want to do that./

 

“Ok,”he shrugs, speaking aloud. “Move over so I can taste her instead.”

 

He kneels behind the woman and places his hands on her hips.

 

That fire is back in Mara's sense now, hotter and more turbulent than before. She pushes it down like before, but it keeps rushing like lava, liquid and fierce. 

 

Finally, bitterly, she gives into its flow.   
/Hyperdrive/ she whispers into his mind. /I'm sorry. I… I just.. Hyperdrive.../

 

He nods once, instantly, comes around to where she is. Pulls her gently to her feet.

Luke turns to the Dom and gives him a nod. 

 

"Perhaps later, Jak. I think this little one needs some special care of her own after all."

 

The other man laughs and gently waves them away, deep in conversation with a woman in leather.

 

"Come on," he says, guiding her away. “Let's find somewhere to talk."

 

He stops by the bar to get drinks, then leads her back to their curtained recess. She sits numbly on the wide leather bench and sips on her spirit, eyes glazed on the floor.

 

Clearly Luke knows this place, and  _ well _ . Is this where he learned all he’s shown her? Presumably, he usually partakes of these women. Of the activities on display.

 

"You're shocked," Luke reads her aloud. “I’d have thought this was mild on your spectrum, all things considered. It's just a place to experiment; to be anonymous. Those things are hard to come by in a galaxy like this."

 

Mara nods, not meeting his eyes. "I'm not judging you," she maintains. "I'm just... processing.”

 

He considers this. There’s a silence while they both think.    
"You don't like the idea of me touching other subs," he presses, curious.

 

Again, that unmissable burst of fire in her sense. Mara is as surprised by it as he must be.

 

"I... I've no hopes of an exclusive arrangement," she finally responds. "But I do find it... difficult to see you with others. I can't really explain why.”

 

He nods, weighing her up. Kneels down beside her and cradles her face in a palm.

 

"Do you want to leave?" he asks her, looking straight in her eyes.

 

She shakes her head firmly. "No. No, I want.. will you touch me, instead? Touch me like you want me…”

 

He smiles, still holding her gaze.    
  


"Well,  _ that _ should be no problem at all."

 

He kisses her, hard and hot. Pushes his tongue into her mouth, tasting of liquor and Luke. His hands are in her hair, roughing it, then everywhere, then none of the places she craves. He slides the straps from her shoulders and bounces her breasts out into the air, and she tips back her head in the hope of him following down.

 

“You looked so fucking beautiful with that Sub,” he murmurs against her skin. “You’re the most breathtaking woman in this whole crazy club.”

 

And then his mouth is on her breasts, hot and wet, and his hands are squeezing and digging into her flesh.

He drops one hand to her stomach and slides it down the front of her thong. She is unbelievably wet, after all of this and so many days craving his touch. In trying to fill up that space with the marks and their fists she'd simply hollowed the emptiness deeper. She needs this - needs him to touch her like this, to unravel her like hair in a braid.

 

He dips between her soft folds, then slides up to her clit. Rolls it between his fingers, as her hips begin to push in time. Forget the how, forget the why. That familiar pressure is building and oh god, she needs this, she needs this even more than she knew.

 

Sliding his hand from her snatch, he pulls it up to his mouth, tasting her wetness. Eyes on hers, he brushes the tips to her lips until she slips out her tongue and licks at them too.

 

“Do you want to come?” he whispers, resting his forehead to hers.

 

Sucking now, hungrily, she can only nod, all eagerness and need. He smiles, pulls his hand to her cheek, strokes it gently down.

 

“Then you’d better be good for me,” he says, with a hint of wickedness in his grin. Pulling her up onto unsteady feet, he steers her hazily, shakily, back into the crowd.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that took me so long! Back on track now, I think... Thoughts welcome, as always! x


	11. Chapter 11

 

An hour later Mara's head is swimming with alcohol, arousal and bass. He's not giving her time to think - no doubt by design - and has edged her to orgasm more times than she can count. On the dance floor, at the bar, beneath a darkened, smoky stairwell. He'd tried in a room where a group of women were being flogged, and she'd wound up too distracted. Something felt out of place, something she couldn't rationalise. She found herself watching Luke's eyes, monitoring him, and he somehow picked up on that. Withdrew his hand, moved them gently away. Since then he's ravished her away from any diversions.

 

They're on the basement level, against dark damask curtains, his breath hot and heavy at her neck. Their embrace is partly on show, part obscured, but she quit caring who saw them here hours ago. Her whole body is tense with coiled need, her pelvis aching with delicious heat.

 

"Please," she whispers against his lips as he strokes her, slowly, torturously. "Please Luke."

 

He pulls away enough to watch her eyes.

 

"Please what?"

 

"Please let me come."

 

His eyes crinkle with his smile.

 

"All in good time. We're leaving soon. Anything else you'd like to see before we go? For your _education_?"

 

He gives the word heavy connotation, as if it were all pretence.

 

She pauses, considers. She has seen more than enough, but this is a rare opportunity - in a few weeks she'll be gone, and imagining him here.

 

It's the same part of her that likes it to hurt that asks, "What's the most extreme room? Can you take me there?"

 

He laughs, surprised, and for a second he is all farmboy again, that dominant, powerful persona falling away. "You're sure?" He regards her with surprise and consternation. "Of course. When did I ever do things by halves?" He looks at her for a long moment, then shrugs and nods. "Come on, then," he says, and gives her hand a small squeeze.

 

He leads her deeper underground. The music is so loud down here that it resonates through them like a heartbeat, until they can communicate only inside their heads. They come to a curtained recess and he gives her hand a firm squeeze.

 

/You sure about this?/ he asks again, through the Force.

She nods, rolls her eyes, and they step in.

A few people look up as they walk into the room, but there's no recognition this time. They quickly return their focus to the action.

On the table is a woman, with long, dark, black hair. She is lay on her front, bound at ankles and wrists. Again she is gagged, but this time with a ring, leaving her mouth spread crudely open in a silent cry.

 

A crowd of men are pleasuring themselves over her. Her back and ass are visibly slick with ejaculate, and as they grow nearer, Mara can see that her ass is held open with a medical device. A black, gaping hole. A speculum.

 

Mara jolts. Frozen to the spot, eyes wide, she watches incredulously as one man reaches orgasms and pours his pleasure into the woman's spread hole.

 

/Are they...?/

 

/Well, you said you wanted extreme/ comes an amused reply.

 

He guides her to a bench and encourages her to sit. To her left, a man in a gimp mask is chained to a frame by his ankles and wrists. A woman in a PVC catsuit with a shaved head is applying weights to his testicles. He is squealing with pain, his cock lewdly erect.

Luke chuckles at Mara's wide-eyed expression, and she swats at him aghast.

 

/And this does it for you?/ She is asking in his mind, her features painted with incredulity. /Ah, no/ he murmurs in her ear. /Never been in here before. Not quite my thing, but each to their own/

 

Is that relief he's sensing from her? So she does have some hard lines after all.

 

Before them, the man with the weights begins to weep as the Dom swings them back and forth. They watch in mute silence for a moment.

 

Finally, Luke breaks. "Want to get out of here?" She smirks at that. "Thought you'd never ask."

 

Back in their booth, she downs her drink in an urgent way. He tries to gauge her emotions but gets only the haze of the alcohol, and a vague sense of arousal.

 

That, at least, he knows how to deal with. He grabs her dress and coat, places a hand at her back, and guides her proprietarily to the door.

 

\---

 

As they step through into his apartment Luke's shoulders rebound from an unseen weight, lifted. He got her back here. He'd felt certain she'd try to resist.

 

For this reason he's kept her on edge all night - even in the speeder, his fingertips drowsing along the inside of her thigh. Need is a powerful persuasive, he knows, and so he’s employed it to its fullest potential.

 

Yet now that they're here he feels oddly… drained. Perhaps it's the tension in his veins, or the drink, or just the lateness of the hour. Perhaps it's his own pattern of spiking and suppressed arousal all night that's wearing him thin. Maybe all of these things combined.

 

But now she's here, coat wrapped self-consciously around herself, cheeks and lips flushed against her pale, milky skin, he wants all the wrong things. There's a dark sort of irony in how inappropriately ‘appropriate’ his wishes for her are, considering all that they've witnessed tonight. He suspects she'd choose the speculum thing over what’s on his list.

 

He fixes them drinks and begins to fill up the tub. She lifts an eyebrow at this, but he sweeps an arm in mock chivalry and says, “for you, my good lady,” making her smirk. Then he politely leaves the room so that she may undress, or whatever else. It's a pointless formality at this stage in proceedings, perhaps, but Luke feels privacy is a right in itself. Maybe she'll want to use the toilet, or something.

 

So he's a little surprised when he returns, cautiously, several minutes later, to find her just as he left. She's watching the water slowly rise, the flotsam of bath foam a mountainous topography. Standing there silent, in that saucy black underwear that's been driving him wild. When he steps closer he can see she is shivering slightly.

 

He turns off the taps.

 

"Mara?”

 

She blinks, slowly breaking her stare.

 

“Actually, I don't need this. I think… perhaps I should go.”

 

Sith, he's losing her, and something in his chest starts to rent. She's cooled down and slipped straight into over thinking, of course. He needs to fire her back up.

He moves to stand so fits into her. He can feel the tiny goosebumps on her skin, can smell the bar smoke in her hair.

He runs the backs of his knuckles down her neck, nudging away the stray hairs to expose her skin to his mouth that follows. As he kisses, he sends her memories of their evening; how she felt, wet and panting as he stroked her at the bar. The smell of her lust on his fingers making him ache for her all night.

She hums quietly in response, turns just a little into his touch. Slowly, regretting the callouses on his fingertips, he slips the straps of her bra from one shoulder. The expanse of pale freckled skin this exposes proves irresistible, and he has to lean in to taste at her collarbone. Her breath is softly audible now. She's not, he notes distantly, asking to leave any more.

He repeats the gesture on the other side, then opens the clasp at the back. The bra falls away with a sigh, and he peels it gently from the curve of breasts. Her eyes drop closed. That flush is back and blooming in her cheeks again.

Kneeling, he begins to ease the straps of her knickers over her hips. She arches her bottom to aid in his pulling and his arousal makes an unexpected surge. Her body is the most exquisite delight he has known, & he has to quash the desire to throw her down on the floor and devour her with bruising force. Pin her beneath him and never, *ever *let her go.

Grazing ankles with fingertips, he holds out a hand for her to steady herself as she steps out of the pants. Then, still holding her hand like royalty alighting a carriage, he helps her step into the tub.

He sits on the floor behind her and teases her hair out of its style. She tilts her head back and allows it, and his fingers drift to simply untangling, in long, haphazard sweeps.

Their arousal runs between them like a background hum; neither one satisfied, both a little overstimulated and tired. She tips her head back into his hands and closes her eyes. This whole moment is stained with the bittersweet sense of the ephemeral.

Eventually she breaks the silence and says, “why don't you get in?” It hadn't been his intention but the chance to slide in next to Mara Jade's wet, naked body isn't something a man can turn down lightly, so he willingly strips and steps into the water.

Feels it, warm and comforting around his calves.  
With a stab of untold bravery he sits at her back and pulls her to rest against his chest. She tenses a moment then draws in a breath, and he feels her form soften to mould back into him. He scarcely dares move lest he should scare her away. He barely even breathes.

Since she resigned in her role, he has felt her like this. Like a wild winter bird, frozen fast to a fence; flailing her wings and trying desperately to flee, but kept tethered to the spot by the cold at her feet. All his instincts are to help her, to show her kindness and warmth, but he has the inescapable feeling that too much will bring on a thaw. He sees it clearly in his mind; empty hands, and the ghost of her warmth where she passed briefly through. He doesn't want her trapped, but he can't bear to let her go.

He reaches for a bottle of cleanser and begins to lather her hair. He senses the beginnings of a protest, but dispels it with “bar smoke. It doesn't smell like you,” and she relents into his hands. Her dark red tresses coil like serpents between his fingers, roiling in a fog of cleanser foam. His Aunt Beru knew a fable about a woman with snakes in her hair. If you looked her straight in the face she would turn you to stone, and it's fair to say certain parts of Luke's anatomy support this suggestion. Increasingly so.

As he's rinsing out the suds, her hair a dark curtain of copper now, she speaks again.

"Why are you doing this, Luke?”

“I told you, the smoke…”

“No. Why are you doing all of this. With me. Us.”  
Her words are slow and lethargic, her body deeply relaxed. He takes a breath and releases some of the panic that rises at her words. Her question is loaded, but it's laden with ease.

So, he laughs.

“Why am I strapping the hottest girl in the galaxy to my bed and having my wicked way with her? Is that seriously your question?”

She huffs at his teasing, but she is starting to smile.

“I'm just incredibly selfless - what can I say? It must be all that Jedi honour of mine you like to talk about. I'm practically a saint.”

She laughs now, sends a lazy splash in his direction.

"I don't think they let saints do the sort of things we saw tonight, Farmboy,” she cackles, and as he laughs along, all he can think is that for once, she didn't argue against his compliment.

Later he rises and fetches them towels. He helps her out as before, and wraps her in the largest and softest one he owns. Teases the tangles from her hair with his own basic but functional comb. She finds some forgotten lotion of his and smoothes it into her skin in long, circular motions. His heart feels tight just watching her.

When both are wrapped and dried, he kisses her softly on the lips. She doesn't fight, so he kisses her more urgently then, along with a firm and wandering caress. She lets him. Leans into him, even. She kisses him back.

On instinct he lifts her, wraps her legs around his waist and carries her easily to his bed. She sprawls back on his sheets, pale skin against pale cotton, with a tangle of red framing her face, and he stops a moment to just soak in the sight. How many nights like this do they have left together? He can’t bring himself to count.

Then he climbs over her, pulls the blankets up, and resumes kissing her for all that he's worth. She lets him. She kisses his shoulders, his biceps, his hair. Draws him close with her knees against his hips.

When he finally enters her, breathless minutes of stroking and tasting later, she is hot and wet and open, and it feels like coming home. She wraps her legs around his hips and he rocks into her, gently at first, growing frenetic as they rush towards their delayed release. When he reaches down and brushes her clit with his fingers he feels her whole body clench around him, her hips surging forward, head thrown back, and it's his name on her lips as she shivers and convulses in long moments of wet and aching bliss. Her inner contractions are like wet velvet against his cock and seconds later he is emptying himself within her with reckless cries, as she pulls him by the buttocks as deep as she can.

As he collapses to her side and draws her into his arms they both struggle for breath, and for words fit to follow so much sensation. Neither up to the task, Mara buries her face in his neck, and within minutes they are both sleeping the heavy sleep of the sated.

He wakens as the dawn does, and is surprised to find she stayed. It speaks more of her fatigue than her feelings, but he delights in it nevertheless.

He listens to her breathing and considers his next move. As soon as she wakes, she'll be heading for the exit. That she slept over at all will discomfit her enough; her reflections on what proceeded it could well prove catastrophic.

Any fantasy of a shared breakfast and a pot of caf will of course remain precisely that - there is no dissuading Mara Jade when she sets her blaster to ‘run’.

<i>Unless…</i>

A thought flickers to mind but he bats it away. That would only inflame her, he is sure. He needs to think of something else. And yet, the idea won’t leave him alone.

An hour or two later, Mara stirs to the smell of caf. She knows exactly where she is long before opens her eyes; that reported luxury of a moment's forgetting has never been hers. She knows, and she clenches her gut with regret. Stupid. Stupid, wanton, and painful.

She moves to drag a hand across her face, and something jars. Her wrist. Fully alert now she snaps her eyes to her hands.

Both are tethered in glossy white blaster cuffs to the top of the bed. Moving her legs, she finds them bound together at the ankle with thick loops of tough, nylon rope. Rearing up as best she can, she turns to glare at the culprit where he stands, half smiling leaning nonchalantly against the door. Watching her naked flailing with altogether too much pleasure.

He holds out a mug to her with a curl of steam.  
“Good morning, Pet. Care to earn yourself some caf?” 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well. Given the drama in the comments after the last chapter, I wasn't sure what to do with this fic.  
> But then my muse stopped by and chapters 12 & 13 wrote themselves, so I guess we're finishing this thing after all. Big thanks for all the rational, open minded & encouraging comments! x


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who left encouraging comments and messages.  
> Consider this shameless Saturday-night-smut an expression of my gratitude ;)

She could get out of this.

Oh, of course she could. One flick of the Force on these - admittedly excellent quality - binders and she could be out the door. Actually, she might take the cuffs with her, come to think of it. They're patently wasted on Skywalker's usual type of lover if that girl at the office is anything to go by...

"They're strictly for Jedi purposes," he interrupts her thinking, and she turns to throw him a scowl.

"Can't a girl have a private thought around here?"

He shrugs, unphased. "She can if she works on her shielding."

As it happens, she _has_ been working on it. She's been constructing her shields with more care than ever, but somehow it isn't enough. Whether that's owing to Skywalker's strength, or some side-effect of them fucking, she isn't quite sure. For his part he seems fairly unaware, so she's aiming to keep it that way. Force knows he'd only read into it all.

"Anyway," he's continuing, "you'd never make it out of the room. I'd have you back in those cuffs before you'd even found your underwear."

She huffs at that.

"I'm pretty sure this sort of treatment is illegal under the jurisdiction of your sister's republic," she reminds him. "Kidnap, torture."

"Torture?" He gasps, all mock affront. "I just offered you caff!"

Surrendering flat onto her back, she sighs.

"Fine, so you did. And what do I need to do to earn this liquid distinction?"

He considers her. Considers all that he's learned about her - her body, her kinks. Her wants and her needs, where they meet, and where they divert. Finally, he takes a sip from the mug, and says easily, smiling -

"Dinner, tonight. 7pm at Carluzzos."

"You have got to be kidding."

Her head whips to him and the anger is visible now on her face. Wrestling with the restraints, she bends her legs up to try and cover herself somewhat.

"Only you could have a naked woman strapped to your bed and want to untie her so you can romance her." The disdain is evident in her voice, but there's something more. Vulnerability. Fear.

So he throws her a lifeline.

"Agreeing to dinner will earn you a mug of caff. I didn't say anything about untying you."

Her eyes meet his, flashing with emotions he can't quite map. Anger, certainly. And something more. Confusion, perhaps.

"I'm not thirsty," she replies haughtily, and he laughs and drains the mug.

"Suit yourself," he says, setting it on his drawer top. "Perhaps you'll feel differently later on."

He advances towards her and sees her pupils flare. Even in anger their connection remains, and he can tell by the slow flushing across her décolletage that she knows where this is headed.

He climbs over her naked form, sits straddling her waist. She turns her head away in a show of disaffection.

"Got anywhere to be today?" he asks, running his fingertips up the tender skin along the inside of her arms.

She feigns nonchalance.

"Nothing urgent. Maybe I'll catch up on some sleep."

He tampers down the smile that twitches to his mouth. Runs his fingers closer to her underarms, watches her flinch as it almost tickles.

"I don't think so," he says, and rising on his knees he tugs his sleep pants down to below his buttocks.

"I think you'll be doing whatever I tell you to do."

Exposed now, her eyes are transfixed on his cock; only his arousal keeps him from feeling self-conscious. That, plus the look of abject hunger in her eyes, and the way her tongue slowly traces her bottom lip, her lips slightly parted.

He holds himself loosely, fists the length a couple of times.

"I want to fuck your mouth, Mara Jade. I want to mark you for my own."

She swallows hard, her eyelids heavy. She nods, still not looking away from his erection, and strains imperceptibly forward to reach for him. He stays deliberately back.

"No," he says. "Not like this."

He rises onto his knees and turns himself; wincing slightly at the thought of the view he's affording her. Then all such thoughts stray far away as his face nears the soft patch of auburn curls between her legs. He reaches forward, slackens the ankle rope enough to allow her to part her knees. Pushes them open.

He can feel her breathing deepen from his seat at her waist - feel the rise and fall of her exhalations beneath him.

He slides back onto all fours, until his cock is above her face. Hands indisposed, she uses her face to guide him into her mouth - nuzzling him, mouthing him, sucking him deep. It’s base and animal, and with an unchecked groan he feels his length sink deep into the sudden heat of her mouth.

The smell of her sex is driving him wild and he dives between her legs, pushing his nose deep into her folds and nudging her open for him. There's a combination of last night's pleasure and a fresh wash of her juices, and the taste is so intensely erotic he thinks he might just come in that instant. Has to fight back his urge and focus on the aim; on pleasuring her first.

He pushes his tongue up and deep inside of her, feels her contract around its tip. She is moaning now, raw and muffled by his thickness lodged deep in her mouth. She is sucking and bobbing and licking and swirling and it's all he can do not to drop to his haunches and fuck her deep in her throat. The thought that she'd let him flashes between them, and his whole body shivers.

He moves his attentions up and draws her clit into his mouth. With a measure of suction he pulls it to full swollen arousal and then begins to nip at it, teeth gently sheathed in his lips. Her hips buck up wildly against him and his face is awash with her juices. His body stutters, and he feels her take another inch of him into her throat.

Fuck. This isn't going to last much longer, for either of them.

Bracing his weight on an elbow he slides his fingers just below his face. Slips one, then a second deep into her pussy, feels her already tensing and squirming around them. She's even closer than he thought, and as he tilts the pressure to that rough patch within her he feels the telltale surge of wetness under his tongue.

Her mouth fully open in a desperate scream, his length sinks into her throat and she is momentarily silenced as her orgasm rips through her body. As he pulls away to let her breathe he feels himself pulsing and before he can even check if it's ok, he is spilling into her mouth, hot white ropes of his ecstasy filling her mouth and spilling over her cheeks.

They're both dripping and panting and God - this can't end. Whatever this is they're doing, it just keeps getting better. He is sure she is thinking it too. He can't hear the words, but he can sense the wavelength of it in her mind.

He finds his way down beside her, cleans her up with a towel. There's something unmistakably tender in the way he slowly wipes at her face, which he chalks up as a victory when she doesn't brush him away.

As his breath regains slowly beside her, he feels her smile in his mind.

/7, did you say?/

He turns to look at her with heavy, sleepy eyes.

/Only, I could murder a caf./

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're reaching a conclusion here, I swear.  
> Three or four more chapters, max. Just had to squeeze in a bit more smut before that ;)
> 
> Special thanks as always to my beta JadedSkywalker.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This isn't really quite right. I'm posting it anyway. Done is better than perfect, right?

At 7 pm he picks her up from her apartment.  
  
"It's not a date," she had spat at him when he'd insisted on this, but he's only laughed and said, "does that mean I won't be getting lucky tonight?"  
  
Insufferable, smart-mouthed Flyboy.   
  
She's wearing the black plug again tonight. He'd reintroduced it in their afternoon's play and she can't help but think that there was a plan to this. Something like a restraining bolt, psychologically; he knows how to play her kinks well enough stop her from racing to conclusions and doubt.   
Truth be told she's had a fair few of them since their time at the club. What had started so simple has fast become a tangled mess, and she finds her thoughts snagging in relentless, impossible loops. She has traded one need for another, more virulent; one crutch for something equally essential, but even harder to source. In a couple of weeks she'll be light years away from the one person who gives her this rush, and it’s not going to be pretty. She's been around enough spice addicts to know a hopeless junkie when she sees one.   
  
She carries this knowledge inside, a glowing ember that burns steadily in her gut. When she's taken more than her share, when the balance needs redressing, when shame comes licking at her heels - she simply gives it a prod, feeds in a few fragments of emotional kindling, and the fire roars back to full and vibrant life.   
  
So, the plug isn't necessary - not in the way he might think. He's already gifted her with a greater pain than he could possibly imagine, and she's not sure whether to be grateful or resentful of this.   
  
He proffers an arm as they walk to his speeder and the girl that takes it isn't Mara at all. She's a lighthearted thing, a trader's daughter, maybe - out to dinner with a guy that makes her feel playful and light. At least, that's what she tells herself, to keep the darkness at bay. That's what she plays in her mind.   
It's a short drive, and they share a mutual, companionable silence. She's a little more used to wearing the toy this time around, but her thoughts still slip back to that uncomfortable night. Feeling so foolish, so used. Now she feels other things, endlessly, but still that same undercurrent is there. Like a familiar baseline, it throbs through their every scene.  
He helps her out of the speeder. She rolls her eyes, but permits him this - she'll save her arguments for bigger things, later on. When he guides her towards the back of the restaurant she falters, giving a quizzical look.  
  
"Trust me," he grins, and gives her hand a quick tug. He leads her to a fire escape; a long silver ladder in smooth durasteel scaling the entire height of the building. It's archaic and unused, but looks structurally sound. But all the same…   
  
"Come on," he nudges her. She looks down at her high-heeled shoes and gives an exasperated huff. Unpredictability is most seriously overrated. Still, she's done worse in heels, and at far greater risk, so she flips back her hair and begins to clamber up.   
  
Luke is right behind her, and peeks a glance up her skirt. "Damn, you're wearing underwear," he grins.   
She considers the risk of swinging a leg down to kick him.   
  
Eventually they reach their destination - a flat portion of roof before the tangle of pipe work and ventilation ducts. It's dusty and dry, with an astonishing view of the city, and spread before them to the right is the purpose of the climb. An old weathered blanket, a battered service lamp. It’s too dirty and noisy to be classed as romantic, but still there’s a tightening in Mara’s chest that she can’t quite equate.  
  
"The food _is_ from Carluzzos, so I'm not just being cheap," he offers by way of explanation, as he guides her forward with him. He tugs at a large crate with the restaurant's branding and begins to unpack.   
  
Bread, cheeses, pasta, wine. Chocolate. Fruit. More wine.  
  
He gestures for her to join him. She takes her shoes off and quietly complies.   
  
"After last time, I thought we could try something different. Something a little more… us."   
  
_There is no us_ , she thinks automatically, then slips the trader's daughter over the thought. She can see he is watching her, trying to gauge her reaction.   
  
"So you see me as more of a dirty rooftop girl than a candlelit restaurant one?" she asks, unreadable. Luke sits up a little straighter.   
  
"Not at all. I just thought this might be... nicer. More relaxed. If you hate it we can still make the reservation downstairs." He kneels as if to do so, and she stills him with a hand. Let’s her face soften to almost a smile.   
  
"Farmboy, it's perfect. And it's not a date, remember, so stop worrying what I think."   
  
He looks at her then, hard and thoughtfully.  
  
"I always worry about what you think, Mara Jade."  
  
It's an oddly enigmatic thing to say  
  
. . . .   
  
They eat, they talk, they drink the wine. They laugh at mutual acquaintances and argue over the star placements. If it _had_ been a date, he’d be doing quite well; perhaps he’s been practising. The thought occurs that after she's gone, there may well be a real somebody to practice with. He’s ready for that now in a way she’s not sure he ever truly was before. He’s just seemed so much more settled, these last few months.  
  
“So what will you do once you finish on Coruscant?" he asks, breaking her reverie. She watches his hands shred his bread; a repetitive, anxious gesture.  
  
"Back to Karrde, eventually. First I'm going to travel some, take some time to... reacclimatise. Get on top of a few things."  
  
 _A few men_ , she thinks wryly. _Hundreds, if necessary.  
  
_ "Stop that." His voice is sharp and perfunctory - setting his wine glass down hard. Her widened eyes meet his, tight with anger. "You're broadcasting," he says through gritted teeth. "Are you _trying_ to hurt me?"   
  
"A joke," she states, cooly. Neither of them is quite buying it, but what can she say? That he can increasingly read her like a holonovel? That she'll be thinking of him every damn time?   
  
From the twitch around his eyes she's not certain he hasn't caught all of her follow-up thinking too.   
  
She tries to talk of safer things. Of her remaining workload, of his plans for the Quarter. She's rarely seen him so idle for so long, this stay on Coruscant an unusual hiatus in both length and location. She wonders vaguely if he'd have stayed this long without her involvement. If her ‘education’ hadn't distracted them both.  
  
"No," he says in answer. "I don't think I would have done, no.”   
  
The heat of both his words and his gaze overpower her, so she shifts listlessly away, only to find him grabbing her by the wrists. His tone is masterful now, all trace of that earlier vulnerability gone.   
  
"Mara. I don't want you with other men." His voice is deeper and growly; altogether unlike him, and she finds it... intriguing.  
  
"We have an arrangement," she reminds him, curious to see where he's taking this.   
  
"Until you leave," he confirms, and she smiles a little, nods. "Maybe I won't let you go."   
  
He leans in and closes the distance between them, mouth to her neck, hands on her thighs before she's even quite registered his movement. He is assaulting her pleasure points and she can feel herself squirming, quickly losing control as he unknowingly stokes the ember of that ever burning hurt. Fire to tinder. It blazes furious in seconds. Somehow she's lying back on the blanket, the stars swimming above her, and she's clutching on to Luke as he strokes over the toy she is wearing for him, as his lips cover her neck in searing, open mouthed kisses.  
  
And then his comm alerts  
  
. . .   
  
It's with unsteady legs that she follows him back down the ladder - him still apologising for the interruption, so at odds with the man he'd been moments ago. Some diplomatic emergency with his sister was calling, and though she could sense his reluctance, he clearly felt a duty to attend.   
  
She's not the type to get offended, so she swallows her disappointment and puts it away. Of course she should come second to his family. Hadn't she been the one saying this wasn't a date?   
  
Still, as he leans in to brush against her lips she can't help feel a flicker of hope that he'll send for her later. She can wait up; she doesn't mind. There are so few nights left now for her on Coruscant. So few nights left for this.   
  
He pulls away regretfully and rests his forehead against hers.  
  
“It'll be a late one, I think... Meet me for breakfast instead?"   
  
She nods, schools her features to something unflustered, turns to flag down a cab.   
  
"And Mara?" He calls, across the growing divide. She looks back at him askance, suddenly tired beyond reason, stroked and poked until she has burnt herself out.   
  
/Keep that plug up your ass, ok?/ With a smirk and a head nod, he turns and is gone.  
  
  


* * *

 

It's been an awfully long night.   
  
Bleary eyed on just a few hours sleep, Luke traipses back to his apartment to shower and change. He's glad his sister can call on him in times of need, but can't help but curse at her timing. There are two days left of Mara's notice at the Alliance, and last night had been significant. Last night had felt like they were moving towards something - a conclusion; a confession? A communication, at the very least.   
  
As he rounds the corner to his own corridor he senses a presence. His tired senses take an extra moment or two to fathom why it's familiar, and in that time he sees a somewhat bedraggled female rise from her seat against his door.   
  
"Tessara? What are you doing here...?"   
  
She is wearing evening attire; a dress and high, glittery heels. There is makeup smudged messily around her eyes.   
  
"I came by to see you last night, but you weren't here. You weren't here all night, as it happens..."   
  
There's an accusation to her tone that he is altogether too tired to tolerate.   
  
"Tessara, please. I've told you how I feel." He runs a hand tiredly over his face. The sun is barely even up, and he's had enough. Only the thought of his breakfast plans is keeping him going right now.   
  
"Who is she?"   
  
He swipes his chip and his apartment door glides open. The smell of the familiar blows into his face and fortifies him a little.  
  
She turns to follow him in but he blocks her with a subtle arm across the frame.   
  
"My _sister_ , Tessara, and this cannot keep happening. Please don't make things difficult. I'd like to be friends."   
  
And with an ill-concealed yawn, he lets the door shut between them and heads to the refresher to shower.   
  


* * *

 

 

With a light rapping against the door frame he enters her office.   
  
She doesn't bother to look up, engrossed in her data task. She's known he was coming from ten clicks away.  
  
"What is it, Skywalker?"   
  
She can hear the smile in his voice.   
  
"I need to meet with you, Jade. It's about the Turren agreement."   
  
She slips the datapad to the desk with a sigh.  
  
"Can't it wait? I've got the-“   
  
“No, it can't."   
  
He hits the door release and locks it behind him. Her heart starts to skip.  
  
" _Here?_ " she asks incredulously, but he's already striding around her desk, standing behind her. She can feel the warmth of his body seeping through the air. She can smell the faintest trace of his soap.   
  
"Over the desk," he tells her, and she shudders in her seat. He tugs the chair back a little. "The longer you delay this the more likely we'll get caught."   
  
And so she rises to her feet and leans over her workspace.  
"Further," he barks, pushing her shoulders down, and then he tugs her clothing aside exposing her underwear. Pulls this away, too. Her bottom is peachy and pale against the dark wood of the desk, the toy nestled where he left it. He wishes he could take a picture of this magnificence before him.  
  
"Do you know why I'm punishing you?" he asks as he smoothes a hand over her warm derrière.   
  
"Because you're a pervert?" she supplies helpfully, and he lands a sharp smack to her right cheek.  
  
"Any more of that and I'll be using your ruler," he tells her, though he can tell she's still smirking. There's a complicit ease to these encounters now that goes against all the rules he's heard of, but it’s an added pleasure - for both of them.  
"Care to try again?"   
  
“Hmm. Is it because I reprogrammed your astromech to make your coffee the way I like it?"   
  
He moves to slap her again, and then stops a moment.   
  
"Wait, you did?"   
  
"It's too weak otherwise. You need to toughen up, Farmboy."   
  
Another smack, and now he does reach for the ruler. It's in flexible wood, probably antique. He hopes he won't have to break it.   
  
"Push up more,” he hisses, and for all their banter, she obliges.   
  
"If you can't recall the misdemeanour then it'll have to be 50," he tells her and she hesitates, and then says,   
  
“I’m sorry I didn’t show up. It was just breakfast. I had more work than I anticipated - I didn't think it would matter."   
  
He pauses, smiles.  
  
"40 then," he answers, and pulls the ruler back. It sings in the air then resounds against her pale flesh with an audible crack. They're both surprised to hear Mara cry out. She's not usually one for making much noise.   
  
"Quiet, unless you want your PA to hear you," he hisses, and she bites down on her lip. "39 to go," and he pulls back his arm.

Crack.

"You could've commed.”

Crack.

"I..."

Crack.

"I didn't.."

Crack.

"I didn't want..."

Crack.

"To interrupt.”

He frowns at that, grants her a few seconds'  reprieve.

"Interrupt what?"

He smooths a hand over her scarlet flesh, hears her hiss through her teeth.

"I sensed you had company.”

Luke's hand stills on her rear as he tries to figure out her words.

“You did?” It's impossible that she could known this. He’d been shielding securely all night.   
   
Confusingly, there's a sudden rush of emotion from Mara. It feels a lot like when a cockpit decompressed rapidly. It almost makes him choke.

“But why would you…” Something starts to dawn on him, just as Mara clamps down on her emotional leak.  
  
“Look, sharing is one thing. This morning I’d have walked right in on you both.”  
  
"Ah." He pauses to think. "And does that bother you?"   
  
Another smack.   
  
"Of course not."  
  
Crack.  
  
"But I didn't want to intrude."   
  
He sets down the ruler at this, slides a hand down her back and over her scarlet-streaked buttocks.   
  
"Maybe I'd like you to intrude a bit more, Mara Jade," he murmurs, slipping his fingers between her legs. She is damp and hot with desire, and she feels him shiver on contact. He pushes a finger inside, making her cry out again, and immediately she is undulating her hips, pushing back against his hand.   
  
"Come by my place after dinner tonight. We'll see just how intrusive I can get."   
  
He retrieves the wooden ruler from her desk.  
  
"29 left to go, was it?”   
  
“I can’t.”   
  
“I’m sorry?” he asks, sharply.

“I can’t come by tonight. I have a thing - a work thing. A leaving party. And then tomorrow’s the ball…”   
  
He doesn’t answer, simply resumes his strikes. But when she risks a glance back, he’s no longer smiling, his face instead set in a cold, hard line.


	14. Chapter 14

By 7pm Mara is feeling tipsy. Tipsy is as far as she ever takes herself, truth be told, because drinking's never really been her flavour. The loss of control, the heavy cloud of shame that descends afterwards. It's rare she'll even let herself be this hazed.

Tonight she needs it though. Tonight, when people she barely knows are patting her on the back and wishing her well, asking what she'll be doing next week. Next week. This time a week from now, she'll be off planet and sleeping alone. Just the star lines and her own bitter internal monologues to fill the night. Just like she'd wanted, of course.

She won't miss the job. Oh, it was a challenge, and good fun, but the Smuggler’s Alliance’s days are numbered; she's been bailing out a sinking ship for months now. She's simply sped up the inevitable conclusion here.  
She won't miss her apartment with its bare walls and its view of the traffic lines. Won't miss that sleazebag in Accounts or the long Monday meetings. Won't miss the awful caff in the NRI machines.

If pressed, in fact, there's very little she'll miss. Just the one, awkward exception.

She squashes that thought down somewhere dark that she never visits. Finishes her drink, nods to a waiter to bring another. Maybe tonight she'll make an exception to her rule.

On the dancefloor, Tessara is dancing with a couple of guys from the team. She has tolerable grace, but an uneven rhythm, and Mara can't help be exasperated by her awkward lurches and skips. If she were a little more drunk, perhaps she'd shown them how it was done.

But she isn't. She won’t.

As if on cue, the waiter returns, handing her a short glass filled with crystal clear liquid. It smells like cruiser fuel. Tastes about as good. 

She's half way through it when a familiar notion brushes her senses. For a fragment of time she is lost - and then reality hits and she knows he has come. Has he followed her here, for her party? Had he missed her, perhaps? 

Her heart gives a painful twist at the notion, and she's turning to see him, biting down on her smile. She scans the entrance and then the doorway, but can't make him out. She throws a tendril of Force out, and immediately feels him behind her. She turns in a whirl, a quip on her lips, that dies to a sigh when she sees him. 

He is stood on the dance floor, hands loosely at Tessara's waist, while she slowly gyrates her back and bottom against him, laughing. He stands stiffly, awkwardly, full of tension. Leans close to say something in her ear, then strides away, towards Mara. 

She tries to force in a breath. Anything to stop the ache in her chest. 

"Of all the gin joints..." she tries with a smile. It must fail, to an extent, because he looks at her, concerned.

"What is it? I felt you were...afraid?" 

She huffs out a laugh. "Afraid my drink might run dry!" she retorts, and signals the waiter for another. Luke is looking at her questioningly, so she won't meet his eye.

"So to what do we owe the pleasure, Farmboy? You didn't mention this on your itinerary this morning." 

He shrugs, flashing her that toddler grin. "I heard there was a party. Seemed as good an excuse as any other." 

Under the table she feels his hand begin to stroke up her thigh. "Plus someone needs to keep you in check, Mara Jade. You're still mine until you leave this rock, don't forget." 

Something about his touch, or perhaps the timbre of his voice in her ear, sends a shiver down her back. She likes being his. It's nice to belong somewhere again. 

His fingers are brushing the inside of her thigh, right at the top where the skin turns soft and paper thin. One night by his lamp light he had traced the violet veins that ran there, and kissed the topography of her sex. He'd held her open and gazed at her, told her every atom of her was perfect.

She remembers this now, as his fingers brush her curls. 

"Can you come back to mine?" he breathes, eyes on the dancefloor, movements as subtle as a breeze. "After this? When you're done saying goodbye." 

That word again. That damn, burning, acidic word. 

"I.." She swallows. "Ok."

He smiles. "Great. Then I'll wait with you here.” 

She guesses the drink does the trick, in the end, because she gets up to dance. It's nothing to do with the tension coiling in her pelvis, or the ache at the base of her throat. Nothing to do with catching Luke's eyes skimming the dancefloor, including Tessara in her short, sugar-pink dress.

"I'm going to dance," she announces. "You can sit here. Watch."

She takes to the floor and closes her eyes a moment, lets the beat sink into her blood. This is like fighting or flying to her - as natural and responsive as anything else. Her muscles know the movements better than her mind. She just has to let it flow through her. 

She begins to dance from the hips. It's an urban track, the kind she might use as a warm-up for a heavy workout. She gets to throw herself into it, tossing in some gymnastic twists, an awful lot of pelvic flow. Gradually a space clears around her as a small crowd of men begin to watch. A few bolder ones step forwards and she dances with them - the drink cold and light in her blood, the beat drowning out her heart. She feels the best she has all day. 

The men are getting bolder now, slipping hands onto her butt and thighs, but she can handle their sort. She dances away, dances despite them, dances to tease. If she were in the market to take someone home, there's a couple who would do. She makes a mental note to remember this place, then recalls she is leaving.

Leaving. This week. And for the remaining days, she has Luke. 

As if on command he appears behind her. She'd love to do as Tessara and rub herself up against him, but knows it would be unwelcome here. He's never made overt advances to her in public, except for at the club, and of course she understands why. Some women are not fit to be seen with for a man of his station. Some stains impossible to get out of one’s reputation.

So, it's a surprise when he takes her firmly in hand, spins her to face him and puts his hands at her waist. She slings hers up around his shoulders and gives him a tipsy smile, but his force sense is glowering with something like rage. She squints as if this will help her. 

"Problem, farmboy?" she smiles, and he grabs her roughly, pulls her flush to his body, so she can feel every curve and plane. 

"You're mine Mara Jade - do you get that? These men here - they all want you. Tell me you're mine." 

God, she loves him like this. Fierce and possessive, she can almost let herself believe in it all. 

"I'm yours. That's the deal, right? Until I leave, I'm entirely for you." 

And he leans in right there, on the packed, flashing dance floor, and kisses her, hard.

 

\---

 

For a moment she lets him. She kisses him back, even, and then reality dawns, and she is breaking free and choking for breath. The air is hot and humid like bathwater in her lungs, heavy with smoke and the sweat-drenched pheromones of a thousand other beings. She needs to get out. She needs to get away from everything.

Hitting the release on a fire exit, she spills into a dark and damp alley at the rear of the complex. It’s vacant except for a stack of crates and a few recycling pods. She leans a hand against the wall as she steadies her heart and drinks in the cold, fresh oxygen of the Coruscant night.  


It’s only a few moments before she hears the door release sound again behind her.  
  
“You ran.”

  
It’s not an accusation, nor an admonishment. Still, his anger simmers quietly beneath the shape of his words. She’s not sure what the hell he has to feel angry about.  
  
“They can’t see us together. I don’t know what you were thinking.”

He moves nearer, brushes his fingertips against hers.

“Why not?”

“ _Why not?_ Because of Tessara? Because you’re the poster boy for a righteous rebellion and I’m the unprosecuted servant to a facist and murderous dictator? Because I have three inches of black plastic up my ass that _you put there_ , and a skirt short enough for somebody to see? How many reasons do you need??”  
  
His grip on her hand turns firm, and then almost painful. She’s noticed a few times his pressure control is just slightly off in his cybernetic hand, but this time that doesn’t quite account for it.

“A lot more than that,” he says in a low voice, and then he kisses her again. He kisses her like he is a rancour and she is the prey; like he is running uphill on sand dunes with every part of him scrambling for purchase. It is hungry and fierce and not remotely gentle, and she finds that she glories in this - lets herself be malleable and soft to his frantic advances.

He shoves her against the wall and claws at her clothing. Spirits and sadness and the constant sense of the seconds ticking away are fuelling them both as he spins her around and crushes her bare breasts to duracrete. Her nipples graze over rough stone as he pushes his covered arousal against her sex and grinds himself into her.

His hand tugs flitters over the toy, where it pushes back against him.

“Remember what you asked me, after the restaurant?” When he speaks his voice is so low and gravelly that in any other circumstance she’d wouldn't recognise it as him.

She remembers. Of course she does. She forgets nothing about the times they have shared.

“Are you ready tonight?”

Her heart is dancing in her throat. The need in her pelvis is a physical, visceral ache. Yes, she is ready - for anything, for now. She nods with some hesitance, though her heart is quite sure.

He takes several breaths, still stroking the toy base, thinking. Then she feels him grip it, place one hand low against her back to hold her still. Slowly, teasingly, he draws out the plug.

The feeling is pure pleasure. He thrusts it back a little, withdraws some more. Working her, opening her up. The excitement begins to make her whimper.   
 Pulling the toy out fully at last, he unfastens his trousers and draws out his length. She feels his fingers at her pussy, sliding in her arousal, moving to coat himself in her wet, slippery juices.

“Who made you wet like this, little Pet? Was it me or those men on the dance floor?”

She doesn’t bother to answer. They both know what she’d been playing at, and that it had easily worked.  
  
Now he is butting the tip of his fat, hard and sticky cock against her tightly closed hole, and she is forcing herself to breathe. She wanted pain, she reminds herself. This is the only reason their arrangement ever existed.

He leans forwards and kisses her neck, brushing his lips down her shoulders and back. "Are you ready?" He murmurs into her skin. "Concentrate on relaxing. I'll try not to let it hurt."

"I don't mind," she says resolutely, shaking her head. "Don't stop unless I use the safe word. I want you to do this."

Exhaling hard, he straightens back up and then begins to push against her. At first there is nothing, like he is pressing at solid skin, and then suddenly she slips open and he is inch-deep inside.

First it burns and then the pain turns into something deeper. Whatever the plug had felt like was moondust compared to his thick, engorged cock forcing its way into this her tight, virgin hole. Through gritted teeth she is whimpering, then crying out, biting into her own arm for silence. It is an intimate agony, and she can't breathe for the stretching and aching within. She feels him pause minutely, unsure, but then continue, honouring her earlier request and perhaps his body's own desperate need. He moves in small bursts of pressure and she has lost all track of how deep he is when the fire begins to subside. He is still inside of her, holding her hips.

"Are you ok?" he asks softly, and it is all she can do to nod without turning. Stay still, she wants to say, let me get used to this a moment, but she has too much pride, deserves no such grace. So when he starts to pull out she has to muffle her cries against her arm again, has to lock her hips to keep herself from pulling away. It isn't her ass to move, she reminds herself. She has given it to him.

On the second thrust he moves more quickly, and the pain is a little less sharp. By four or five it is feeling ok, and as he builds up a rhythm she can't deny it is becoming increasingly good. Her moans take on a different timbre; she holds herself up and out and open to him.

He is groaning as well now, his movements still careful, still holding something back. Whatever else, he is a master of restraint, it would seem.

He leans forward again and whispers low into in her ear.

"Touch yourself while I fuck your ass, Mara. Touch yourself and tell me how this feels."

She slides a hand down, shuddering at his masterful tone. Dampens her fingers, begins to slide them over her clit.

"It feels... tight," she gasps. "So deep and so ...Ah. It's so intense. Nothing's ever... I can't even..."

 Reaching down he slips two fingers into her soaking pussy, rotating them slowly.  Her legs begin to shake, her vision is swimming a little.

 "I can feel myself fucking you from in here," he tells her. "I can feel how deep I'm buried up inside your ass."

 She bucks at his words, an inadvertent arousal response, and her motion slams his last inch or two home into her body, & they're lost. They're both making animal sounds now, his skin and balls slapping against her cheeks; her arms braced against the wall allowing her to meet each of his thrusts half way.

"Sith Jade.. I've never been... this deep. No-one's ever.... Sith, you're amazing. So tight and hot and amazing. Do you know that? Can you feel it?"

What she feels is stretched and filled and violated, and nothing has ever felt better. With Luke's fingers still jammed inside of her, she feels complete - no space, physically or metaphorically for the emptiness to exist. She feels her orgasm build, and for the first time in memory, she doesn't even think to fight it back. Chases it, in fact - upping the tempo of her fingers, calling out encouragement to Luke. He pounds her with abandon, fucking her senseless, and then she is crying out, rigid against the wall as she comes hard around his cock and insistent fingers. Her muscles lock so tight he can't withdraw, and before she is even done he is joining her, crying out into the darkened alleyway. Pumping his hot white come into the depths of her shivering body.

And then there is gasping, breathless silence. 

He retrieves the plug with a wave of his hand - she’s no idea where he’d stashed it - and as he slides himself free, he slips the toy back in place. She is stoppered, closed up - his hot living come trapped inside of her. It’s clear this is altogether deliberate when he says,

“There. Let me stay a part of you just a little bit longer.”

She doesn’t allow herself to dwell on what that’s supposed to mean, as he helps her back into her clothes and sees her safely into a speedercab home.  
 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to my beta and to you, dear reader, for making it this far. Only one more chapter to go!


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ay me! This chapter did not want to be written. Considering I had the bulk of it already done, it's taken a disproportionate amount of time - the universe just conspired to interrupt me non-stop.
> 
> Anyway, here we are, here it is. It's perhaps a little more fan-ficky than I like to let myself go, but I'm a shipper at heart and found I couldn't end it any other way.
> 
> Thanks so much for reading, and for all of your comments. x

An hour before the ball, a parcel arrives. It's unsigned, delivered by droid, but she recognises the contents as soon as she takes off the paper.

Pink and metallic with long stretchy straps, this vibrator is property of Skywalker.

 Indeed, she has worn it for him before - in a meeting they’d shared. He’d taken great delight in strapping it to her beforehand, his fingers hot and insistent at her thighs. Half way through the tiresome conference he’d activated the timed release, and watched on as she fought off her orgasm for the best part of an hour.

When, in the end she'd succumbed, he'd called an impromptu caf break in proceedings, and came beside her to whisper hotly in her ear.

“Did you just come in the middle of a trade negotiation, Ms Jade? I’m so very proud of you.”

 

It would be foolish to feel any nostalgia for this - it is a toy for Skywalker’s titillation, no doubt used on countless others before her. Still, the memories of that morning - their shared laughter and lust and the long lunch that followed - bring an odd sadness to the fore. She squashes it down into a dark place she never visits.

 Tossing the toy in the bed beside her dress, she heads to the refresher to shower. 

\--

The ball is all glitter and gaiety by the time she arrives, a calculated 40 minutes late. Last night on this planet or not, there are only so many hours of these things she can bear.

Before she has even descended the staircase she can sense he is there. A brief scan of the room reveals a table of Rogues - both in name and presumably nature - accompanied by the unmistakable glow of Skywalker’s warmth. Beside him, in the sort of frock that gives bridesmaids the vapours, she sees a giggling head of blonde hair. Tesarra, then, has accompanied him tonight. She feels a momentary pang of something uncomfortable, and ruthlessly snuffs it out.

 Opting to give them a wise and wide berth, Mara snags a glass of wine from a passing cocktail droid and joins a group of acquaintances exchanging pleasantries. A couple of her colleagues from the Alliance are amongst them, including that sleazy old Twi’lek from accounts. All seem a good deal further than 40 minutes into their merriment, but she’s not planning on catching up.  
“So, off tomorrow?” the Twi'lek is booming, his social propriety evidently diminished by the drink. “All packed and ready, Ms Jade?” and he pats at her bottom for effect.

She briefly envisions tipping her drink over his head before deciding the alcohol would be better spent taking the edge of her senses. She downs the rest of the glass in preparation for a riposte, only for her attention to be pulled away by a gentle tap to her naked shoulder.

Turning she finds Skywalker, in some predictable combination of black. He is smiling in that sunshiney way, and already his arm is around the top of her back, subtly guiding her away from the sleaze and towards his laughing and bustling table of friends. An empty seat beckons as he says, “you’re here at last - we had almost given up. Come, I saved you a place.”

 

Sliding into the chair, she can’t help but notice its warmth beneath her thighs. She spies the tall green cocktail in front of her and realisation lands heavily; this is Tessara’s seat. ‘Saved her a place’ indeed.

 

She slides the drink surreptitiously to the side, no stranger to the tactic of leaving a place holder such as this in her stead. No doubt the girl will be returning shortly to claim it - drink, seat, man and all. Mara suddenly feels much too tired for this.

Still, beside her is Luke, his Force presence radiating that comforting warmth. Like a bonfire on the end of a hot summer’s day; not necessary, but sincerely comforting all the same - and once you've felt it, the night feels a little cooler without its glow.

 With a crease of contrition to his forehead Luke’s opening his mouth to say something when, in a waft of perfume and impossibly ivory silk, Leia descends, embracing both Mara and Luke in effusive hugs.  
“Mara, don’t you dare leave tonight without saying goodbye. I can’t thank you enough for all that you’ve done for us. I’m just sorry your time with us has been called short - you’ll be so greatly missed.” Mara returns the smile as best she can, and is relieved when the attention is passed onto Luke.  

“Luke you _must_ come and say hello to the Ambassador’s daughter. She’s been name-dropping you for the last 30 minutes and it’s really starting to get awkward. She really is very pretty - perhaps you could spare just the one dance?”

And making an apologetic face at Mara, he is herded away by the determined brunette. Just at that moment, the vibrator kicks quietly into life.

“So, Mara” one of the Rogues - Wedge? - attempts brightly. She’s distracted and flushed, but does her best to give him some small show of interest. “Last night on Coru, huh?”

  
She’s quickly growing tired of this question, but nods all the same.

  
“Well” he’s continuing, “I know Luke will be sad to see you go. We all will! He’s been much so easier to be around since the two of you hit upon your... _arrangement._ ”

The vibrations are simmering within her more loudly now, so she has to lean in a little closer to check on his words.

  
“I’m sorry - what arrangement is this?"

Wedge shoots a faux-scandalised look, his eyes full of mirth. “Oh, sorry, are we not supposed to talk about it? Special Jedi secrets?” He adds a lewd wink for good measure.

Mara works to retain her composure. He doesn’t know. There’s no way the saintly Jedi would be bragging about his sex life. Not even to his old squadron buddies.

“It wasn’t such a big secret last night, by all accounts. On the dance floor, down the back alley…” 

The vibe is reaching it’s peak frequency, and her nerves are as rattled as her bones. She stands.

“The problem with flyboys” she says cooly, "is they're all action, no brain. 

Wedge turns instantly white. Downing the remainder of her drink, she slams the glass onto the table and stalks away with as much grace as the kriffing toy and it's insistent vibrations will allow. 

Time to find Skywalker and get some answers. Just what has he been saying to his friends at the table? That less than 24 hours had passed and he’d already been bragging of his conquests makes her suddenly want to retch. She’d been so stupidly vulnerable last night. Did he tell them what she let him do to her? Did they know that she'd let him violate her? 

She scans the crowd, reaching a little with her fragmented Force sense, and gets some trace of him by the bar. Weaving her way in that direction, she instead encounters the other twin - all warm effusive greetings, now with a grinning Han Solo whispering amorously into her ear. 

“Mara! Not leaving already, I hope?” she beams with genuine affection.

“Not quite -  not until I’ve spoken to that brother of yours. Do you know where I might find him?” Even as she speaks she peers around them, trying to track him down. Her heart is beating a staccato rhythm, her blood rushing with fury and fear. And all the while between her legs, growing ever insistent, is the swarming hornet's nest of that ridiculous toy.

“Ah yes, I believe he is dancing just now..” and all three turn to the centre circle, where Skywalker can be seen laughing and twirling an elegant brunette.

Mara smooths her face as best she can. “I see, well if you could just tell him that I…” but even as she speaks, the music lulls, the dance promptly closes. The band step away and in the relative quiet, only one noise prevails.

“Mara…” Leia leans closer, her features askew with concern. “Are you… buzzing??"

For a moment she’s ready to scream. To stride straight onto the dance floor, pull Skywalker down to his knees and run a blade right into his heart.

Instead, she takes a breath, perfects her countenance and says “excuse me, I believe my vibroblade is malfunctioning again.” And with her unexpressed scream still ringing in her ears, she flees to the ladies’ refresher room for respite.

 

\---

 

In the bathroom stall he puts her head in her hands and wishes she could cry. Tears have never come easily to her and right now she wishes she were the kind of girl who could sniffle and sob until her heart felt empty. Instead she stares at the floor tiles and tries to calm herself down.

She's leaving tomorrow. Nothing has changed, nothing is different.

She's just out of practice is all. Time was, where none of this could affect her. She needs to toughen back up.

 The stall beside her flushes and she hears the clip of the woman's heels as she approaches the sinks. She greets a friend, the two of them laughing and chatting against the drone of the hand dryer.

When it cuts out it’s her name that echoes in the sudden fresh silence.

 "Mara Jade? Why on earth would you think that?" one woman’s voice is laughing.

"Well, they’re friendly. Very friendly, from what I can see.” With a cold sense of dread Mara recognises the responder. It takes a little longer for her to fully place it the voice's owner. “She’s always hanging around..."

Tessara. As if tonight had not brought humiliation enough, Tessara is dissecting her friendships whilst pissing in the world’s ugliest dress. It's almost tempting to laugh.

“Oh”, cackles the other, her voice echoing back from the mirror by the sinks. "Well, That may well be true, but I don’t think that there’s anything to worry about…”

There’s laughter, the next words lost amid the running of taps and cosmetic cases snapping shut.

"Poor thing. Every man in the room drooling over her except the one that she wants."

"She certainly turns heads. You don’t think it’s odd that he’s managed to resist?” Tessara sounds jealous, but not terribly scorned. What exactly is her relationship with Skywalker then?

"Well, he can read minds and stuff, can’t he? He can see what's inside. Can you imagine? All that time in the Empire doing kriff knows what. He'll see her for all that she is."

There's a non-commital noise from Tesarra, and the friend persists.

"Sewage is still sewage dear, however pretty the pipe. He might stick his dick in it, but he's not going to marry it, is he?” 

The words are like acid in Mara's throat. It's idle gossip, baseless and crass. She's never given it a moment's concern before, but now, sitting with the damn toy vibrating, quietly now in her hand, she has to wonder. 

This is Skywalker - commitment himself. He tries to marry every girl he sees for more than three dates and yet with her, it has remained strictly casual. He can see her - see _within_ her - like nobody else, and the evidence speaks for itself. He hasn't exactly been bowled over by the insight, has he?

A leaden weight has descended in Mara's stomach; a plomb sinking down into her gut. Gathering her things together, she throws the toy into her bag and waits for her escape route to clear.

The voices fade as the women make their exit, and another person comes and goes.

 

Sithspawned Jedi and his perverted games. She should never have stayed so long on Coruscant - this planet has never held anything but pain for her. 

She can leave tonight - her ship is all ready. The thought that her early departure will cause the Jedi some genuine pain gives her the fire in her belly to start moving.

  
Head held high, eyes dry and clear, she steps out of the bathroom, her hair loose and streaming in her wake. 

And straight into the eyeline of the man himself.

A stretch of empty corridor between them, the carpet ludicrously patterned with galaxies and stars. She studies them mutely while she tries to formulate a plan of escape. 

"Mara" he says, in the fragile voice one might use to subdue a startled wild thing. " _What is it_?"

 Suddenly those tears she had longed for are threatening to form and the lump in her throat is so big she can't fit words around it.

He moves a stride or so closer. She knows that he's sensing the storm of emotion that has blown up inside of her; it’s so loud in her head that it has to be pouring out.

Almost to herself, she hisses, "Sith, the things I let you do to me..." and dropping her face to her hands she chokes back a scream at her own stupid, ridiculous naivete.

"I'm sorry?” He steps closer, straining to hear her over the background pull of music and chatter. 

He's right before her now. She can see his spiky blond eyelashes; the softness of his lips. Her heart is breaking open in one slow and agonising draw. 

"I'm not a joke, Luke."

“What?” His face is all bafflement, his eyes flicking between both of hers as he tries valiantly to catch up. 

Suddenly fierce, she grabs the toy from her back and flings it at the wall beside them. It shatters in a mess of pink shards and lands tangled in its own electrics on the star-strewn floor. 

"I'm not a fucking joke, or a stop-gap, or some slut. I'm a woman and a sentient and I have every bit as much to offer as the Tessaras of this world, even if nobody else sees it. Even if nobody _ever_ sees it.  I’m not just some disposable fucktoy." 

Those tears are running freely now, but so is she. Whirling on her heel she makes haste down the hall but he catches her elbow and spins her around. Looks her deep in the eyes, with a soft sort of smile and says, 

"Mara, I know."

 She swipes at her cheeks angrily. 

"No you don't. You don't know the first thing abou-"

 "Mara" he cuts her off, his tone firm and incisive, but warm. "I know".

He's always been a brave man, but it's with a unique brand of recklessness that he reaches out and cups Mara's damp face in his palms.  "And now you know it too."

She rails at that. 

"Don't give me that bantha shit, like this was all your elaborate plan. I know all about you bragging to your Rebel friends, all the laughter at my expense. I know about Tessara- "

Luke frowns, but seemingly at her distress than anything else.

 "Tessara is a little… misguided and has hopes for something that cannot be. Anything she said relating to herself or you and I was, I assure you, complete fabrication. She knows nothing more than the rest of them do. Which" he adds, glancing uneasily at the bustling corridor around them "is becoming an increasing amount. Let's find somewhere quiet where we can talk."

 She follows him mutely, if somewhat recalcitrantly to a quiet, muted stretch of hallway, behind a fire door that slides shut as they pass.

He turns to take her firmly by both hands. 

"How could you ever believe I had anything but respect for you? What did they say to get you so agitated?" 

Mara swipes angrily at the tears forming under her eyes. 

"You told Wedge about the alleyway. About what I let you... about what happened last night. About our arrangement."

 There's an unmistakable flash of rage in the air as Luke hears those words, which he quickly tempers. 

“Mara, the Rogues don’t know anything from me. If someone saw us both leave by that exit last night then there might well be some gossip, but that’s as much as they know. You were an Imperial assassin, for Force sake. Don’t tell me you fell for Antilles’ old double bluff?!”

Chagrined, Mara lowers her eyes, and counters “That doesn’t change was Tessara said..”

“What? Help me out here Mara, because until tonight I’d have sworn it was impossible for anyone to hurt you like this.”

She feels that fire flare again.

“Yes, and that’s just it. You think I'm a droid? I’m sat in a fucking toilet listening to your precious girlfriend discuss how little I mean to you. How you find me repugnant in the Force. How the one man on this entire Sith-forsaken planet that I might actually fall in love with wouldnt touch me with a force pike because the best I have to offer is my body - and we both know I’ve already given you that for free."

Luke swallows and draws in a breath.

"I'll deal with Tessara and her... misconceptions. But why on earth would you believe that assessment? Mara, I've told you how I feel."

“Oh yes, you've told me. That my body belongs to you. That you're not sure you’re done with me yet." 

Luke winces as the pieces begin to fall into place. 

"And when she said it, I realised - you've been shielding so much. You can pick up on me more with every passing hour, but I get even less from you now than before all this started. I stupidly thought it was just some sort of sex thing but now I see..." 

“See what, precisely?”

"That you've had to block me out. That you can see in me all that Palpatine did, that what's left is so twisted and black…” 

And then Luke laughs.

 It's so incongruous and impossible that Mara jolts in anguished surprise, scanning his face for an explanation. 

"Mara, do you have any idea..." He stops and shakes his head, still smiling. And then, "Here." 

Raising his hand to her temple she feels a gentle movement in the Force, a haze of cloud blowing apart. Something shifts, it's too liquid to say what - and suddenly he is rushing right into her. His warmth and his joy and his longing and lust - his hopes and his fears and his thoughts and his dreams - his idle speculation, his plans, his regrets. His freaking lunch menu, his underwear colour…

It’s entirely too much. It’s also sort of impossibly glorious. 

"What the hell is this?" she asks, the words coming breathlessly.

He shrugs, looks a little sheepish. “Some sort of Force bond, as best I can tell. I've been trying to keep it back, for now - I didn't think you'd take it too brilliantly. Especially as it works both ways - I didn't want to scare you away. But, Mara, look."

She feels him gesturing in their joined minds, pulling her attention to something, and suddenly she can see with pure clarity his opinion of her. She can see his lust - and a whole swarm of erotic ideas he has yet to make a reality - but also his affection, his trust, his respect and admiration. His dislike of her hair when it's braided too tight. His total fear at losing her tonight. His quiet terror, even now, that’s he’s doing the wrong thing and is scaring her away. His conviction to follow her wherever she runs to, to see this out.

And she doesn't quite know what to say to that. 

"I don’t think you're a joke, Mara Jade. In fact I'm very, very serious about you.” 

A little dazed, she can only say "oh", as she processes these thoughts.

“Come on,” he says, “let's get out of here, ok? I'll buy us some dinner.”

She looks back at the ballroom a second, but he tugs at her hand. 

"Forget your cloak. I'll come back tomorrow - or I’ll buy us new ones, whatever. Just - please. Come with me. Come now. I don't want to waste any more time."

 

\---

 

All the restaurants are closed, as it happens, so they find an all-night diner and hole up in a booth at the back. Luke orders caf and hot chocolate and they both sigh in gratitude when it's delivered by an inexpressive droid. The table is a bubble of much needed sanctuary.

 Mara's still unreasonably quiet, but Luke knows well enough to give her time just to process. He sips at his drink as the moments tick by.

“You know” he ventures, after agonising minutes of silence, “you never did finish telling me your plans for when you leave.”

He reaches his hands out to touch hers where they cradle the warmth of her cup. 

"I haven't... I don't really know yet." Her eyes are tinged pink from their rare fall of tears. She’s not meeting his eyes if she can help it. 

"Well, what do you want to do?” He offers an encouraging smile.

“Karrde will want me back on the staff within standard lunar month. I think the NRI were hoping I might still be available for some intermediary work, albeit remotely, ’til then. And I should get the Fire serviced at the shipyards by Corellia..."

“No” he interrupts her. “I’'m not asking what you should do, or what your ship needs, or about what Karrde expects. What do _you_ want to do?" 

“I don't…” she sputters a laugh. “I've no idea what I want. I’m not sure I’ve even considered that yet. I don't think I can answer that, Farmboy." 

He appraises her for a long moment, thinking, considering this.  
  
“Ok, let's try this some other way then.” 

He takes her hand, waits for her to meet his eyes. 

“I think you do know what you want. You're just not used to asking yourself for it.”

She rolls her eyes at this. “Is this another Yoda thing? It sounds a lot like a Yoda thing.”

 “No it is not a Yoda thing.” His tone is curt, but his smile belies his amusement. “I can assure you that _none_ of what we have been doing was on Yoda's approved curriculum.” 

“But it was about teaching me?”

There's a chink of vulnerability in there. Like she's asking a bigger question.

He tries a different tack.

"What have I done to you that you didn't want? Since this started, since you came that first night. List them for me, now." 

She stops. She thinks about the pleasure, the spankings, the night in his arms. Thinks about making herself so vulnerable to somebody so immeasurably strong. The one person who could physically master her. About the men in the bars who could hit like a speeder truck. About his tending her wounds on her sofa that night.

"Nothing," she is forced to conclude. "You know that - I had the safe word. If I didn't want it, I'd have stopped it anytime. I did stop it, when I needed to."

He nods, a glitter of triumph in his smile.

 "And how much of it would you have asked me for?"

 _Ah. Damn._ She hates it when he has a point. 

"You do know what you want - and what you _don't want_ \- when push really comes to shove. You’re just not used to giving yourself much of a choice.”

He takes a deep breath, squeezes her hands between his, puts his heart right there in them for her to decide.

  
“You’re scheduled to leave here tomorrow. We’ve no idea when we’ll be on the same planet together again. I don't know what's between us, but it's bigger than sex, and I want to see where it takes us. What we might share. Together. So this is push and this is shove, Mara. Stay with me. Stay on Coruscant. Another month - maybe more."

 She looks at him with wide eyes and a racing heart. He's said everything she's never wanted to hear. Everything she has always instinctively run from, committed against. And it is sounding strangely... ok.

She swallows. Still looking at him. 

"Well?" His voice sounds thick, but his face remains calm.

“Are you ordering me to?”

 Half his mouth creeps into a smile. “Would it help?”

She returns the half smile. Then slowly, carefully, she nods. "Ok."

His smile has the wattage of a sunstorm, despite his efforts to temper it. “Ok?” 

“Ok, I’ll stay. We’ll figure it out.”

He jolts in his seat, like he’s repressing an urge to leap across the table at her, or burst into a musical number.

"And you’ll stay at my place. No more running away?" 

Her apartment is already empty, the lease set to expire. It's his bed or the Fire, so that’s no huge concession. She’ll be split between both either way, after all.

"Fine" she says, with less enthusiasm. Brushing her teeth in his sink isn't high on her list, but she can give it a try. 

He’s almost bouncing with joy and enthusiasm now. 

"And you’ll program Artoo to make my caf the right way again, OK? That shit is like molten adrenaline. It's in danger of turning me dark side" he grins, and she shakes her head ruefully.

“H _yperdrive,_ farmboy. Hey look, you were right! Turns out I _do_ know what I want, and it starts with better caf than that crap you brew up… 

And laughing, full of sugar and caffeine and unwavering joy in the midst of the night, he climbs over the table and kisses her full on the lips.


End file.
